


at last, at last

by suspendrs



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cult, Dystopia, F/F, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Violence, Post-Apocalypse, bc would it be a story by me without internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:15:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 41,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspendrs/pseuds/suspendrs
Summary: “Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.”Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium. What has he got to lose, anyway?Or, Harry is born into a cult in a post-apocalyptic world, and Louis is the leader of the rebel group tasked with the mission of shutting them down. Together, they make a rather effective team.





	1. {prologue}

**Author's Note:**

> \--DO NOT REPOST--
> 
> ok so firstly massive shouts out to [Bella](http://dystopianharry.tumblr.com/) for creating this fic fest, otherwise I never would have even started to think about this world you're about to discover and I never would have written something like this at all.
> 
> secondly, shouts out to [Sonja](http://sisqueer.tumblr.com/) for betaing this fic (and hyping me up more than I deserve) you're the real mvp.
> 
> lastly, i just wanna mention how much work has gone into this story. i've never put quite this much thought and careful planning into something before, and i'm sure i still made a bunch of mistakes, but i'm pretty dang happy with how this turned out, and i hope you enjoy it too.

The gymnasium still smells faintly of sweat and rubber from days long past, and the shiny wood floor still shows remnants of centuries old scuff marks and long, arcing lines of red and blue paint. There used to be something big painted in the middle of the floor, something round and colorful, but it’s long been buffed away. It was probably art, or had lettering of some kind; those things have been banned for as long as anyone can remember, but the evidence of them once existing can still be found everywhere. There are entire walls in this complex that have been painted over, tile mosaics in the communal bathrooms that have been destroyed and filled in with thick, plain plaster, empty cavities that might have once been display cases that have been boarded up, or used for simple storage. The tiles in the hallways and in all the rooms are colored, blue and yellow and orange, but they’re faded enough that no one minds them. There are holes carved in the concrete walls where the candles sit, to be lit every night at sundown, since the giant overhead lights built into all the ceilings are long defunct. They’re banned too, anyway; even if electricity still worked, it’s outlawed, and anyone caught even attempting to use it is punished.

This room is always dark, and it’s always cold; it’s in the basement, there are no windows, and since there are more children than adults inside of it at any given time, candles are a safety hazard. The only source of light comes from the covered oil lamps that the Maidens carry, but once the Maidens have gone at bedtime, the room is blanketed in a thick, impenetrable darkness, chilling in more ways than one.

The ceiling is so far away, and because one’s eyes never quite adjust to the darkness of the basement, one’s brain quite often fills the empty space with imaginary visions, creatures of the furthest corner of the mind. It affects the younger children more, frightens them to tears more often than not, but the older ones have had ample time to get used to it and have stopped minding it. For some, the space is welcome. It acts as a blank canvas for the fantasies of a brain not close enough yet to sleep, and becomes a fairytale world only for the night.

In the daily lessons, which are taught in the old classrooms on the upper floors of the building, the Maidens teach the children the story of how the world has already lived and died. The world became so overrun with anarchy, with greed, with evil, that the sun had to kill it just to save it from itself. The sun disappeared for a year, the Maidens say, and sent storms, wildfires, and epidemics in its place. The world was wiped clean, the Maidens say, and the anarchy and all its traitorous technology was washed away, leaving a clean slate for the sun to return to. The world is on its second chance now, and it is up to them, the Maidens say, to do right by the sun, the moon, and the stars, so that anarchy will never take the world over again.

As the only group of humans left alive in the world, it is up to them to start over, to build a world that the sun will be proud of. That is why the Community only exists within the four outer walls of the compound; they have only just begun the process of repopulation, now that they have figured out exactly what the sun wants from them. The Community will remain inside the compound until the sun gives them the signal to expand, at which time they will go free and begin the process of rebuilding the world. For now, the Maidens say, their only purpose is repopulation, and it will be up to the generations of the future to carry on their work.

The compound isn’t very big, but then again, neither is the Community. There are barely enough adults to fill one of the two dormitory buildings, each of which is comprised of one hundred bedrooms. When a boy reaches the age of 18, he is married to the girl closest in age, and they are given a room in the dormitory. The following two years are crucial to the Community’s mission: if, by the age of 20, the two have failed to produce a child, they are separated. The woman becomes a Maiden, spending the rest of her life caring for the children produced by the more fruitful women of the Community, and the man becomes a Laborer, tasked with the manual labor that keeps the Community going: farming, candle making, and maintaining the aging compound. Children that are particularly promising in their education are trained to work in the infirmary, or taken as apprentices to the Leaders, and children who display features considered undesirable for the Community’s ideals are sent to work in the kitchens, or to assist the Laborers. The Community is a well-oiled machine; everyone has a duty, everyone participates and, most importantly, no one leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

The snow falls in gentle flurries outside the windows of the classroom, bright white and sticking to the grassy parts of the courtyard. The crop field is dormant now, and will be until summer; the food for winter was harvested in early fall, and will last until late spring, at which time the Laborers will begin their work again. The sun is bright today, even behind the thick layer of clouds hiding it from the world, and it illuminates the classroom so brightly that the Maiden has to close the curtains a bit to stop everyone’s squinting and blinking.

Harry has never been terribly fond of lessons; beginning at the age of 5, when children are moved from the library to the gymnasium, they have the same information drilled into them every single day from sun up until sun down. They are children of the sun, the Maidens tell them, from where they stand at the front of the classroom, looking out at the sea of small faces scattered about on the floor. They are children of the sun, they have been born to please the sun, and if they fail, the whole world will die and be forced to start over from scratch. 

In one month, Harry will turn 18, and soon he will be married and given a room in the dormitory. He’s not particularly excited about it, but it’s got to be better than this, at least, and he will finally be an adult and get on with fulfilling his duty to the sun. He’ll finally be trusted to hold a candle on his own, and he won’t be kept up at night by the sounds of the younger children crying in the darkness, and there’s a possibility, a slim one, but a possibility nonetheless, that his generation could be the one to finally fill the dormitories and be the first to explore outside of the compound.

He knows that it’s not something he’s supposed to think about, let alone want, but it’s all he can see when he looks up to the dark, empty ceiling of the gymnasium at night. He wants to know what’s out there, wants to know if the compound really is the only thing left in the world that the sun didn’t destroy. He’s sure it is, because he has no reason not to believe the Maidens, but he just wants to know, just wants to _see_. The Maidens say that curiosity is a sin, that the sun punishes those who push the limits, and Harry knows this, but he can’t help but wonder, anyway.

There’s something so attractive to him about the rest of the world being right there, just outside the walls of the compound. The walls are tall enough that they’re all Harry can see, even from the top floor of the building. It’s to protect them, the Maidens say, from curiosity, but all it does is make Harry even more curious about what’s out there.

Back in the days of anarchy, the compound served as a university. It was small, as far as universities went, and was attended only by students of a certain religious affiliation, which the Maidens have never named. According to the Maidens, this university was the closest to the Truth, and that’s why the sun decided to spare it when the world died. The walls were built by the founders of the Community to ensure safety for everyone inside, and for nearly one hundred years, it’s worked. Everything the Community could ever need or want is inside the compound walls, and they should all be thankful, the Maidens say, that the sun shines down upon them and only them.

Once the sun has set for the day and the torches have been lit around the compound, the children are led from the main building to the cafeteria around the corner of the courtyard. It isn’t very often that anyone except Laborers spend time outside for longer than it takes to walk from one building to another. The children only ever walk the path between the main building, where they sleep and have their lessons, and the cafeteria, where they eat two meals a day. Harry can’t wait to be an adult, if only so that he can see the compound from the other side of the courtyard, and have the freedom to walk wherever he chooses.

The main building, where the children are cared for, is on the east side of the compound, and is the biggest of all the buildings. When the compound was a university, this was the building that held the library, the gymnasium, and the majority of the classrooms. Now, of course, the gymnasium is where the children sleep, the library on the ground floor is where the babies and children under five years old sleep, and the classrooms are where the Maidens deliver their daily lessons. The children’s cafeteria is on the north end of the compound, beside the apartments, where the Leaders of the Community live. The leaders have their own cafeteria on the other side of their building; these two buildings are strictly forbidden from every member of the Community except for the Leaders, who are almost never seen and only seldom heard from.

On the west end of the compound are the two regular dormitory buildings, where the married adults live. The third and largest cafeteria in the compound is between these two buildings, and is always open and operating for all of the adults in the Community, Laborers, Maidens, doctors and married folk alike. The south side of the compound is home to the infirmary, which used to be the science building for the university, the chapel, where the weddings happen, and the activities building, which is only ever used for special and sacred occasions, like funerals, or Denouncements.

Harry’s only ever witnessed one Denouncement in his life. They’re not very common at all, nor are they an especially enjoyable event. The Community tries to avoid them at all costs, but occasionally a member of the Community will commit a sin so heinous and revolting that it cannot be forgiven, and the Community must take it upon themselves to Denounce and remove the offender from the Community by executing them.

Harry was young when he witnessed his first and only Denouncement. The members of the Community were led in a single file line into the theater, sat in careful order with the youngest members of the Community in the front, the oldest in the back, since it is most important for Denouncements to have the largest effect on the youngest members. It was a boy, not much older than Harry is now, standing upon a small wooden platform in the center of the stage while the entire Community shuffled quietly into their seats. His head was hung in shame, hands bound with rope in front of him, and from Harry’s seat in the third row, he could see the sparkling tears dripping steadily from the boy’s eyes, forming a small puddle on the platform under his feet. 

“This man,” said a voice, once everyone was sitting and paying attention, “Joseph, husband of Jessica, has been found guilty of homosexuality.”

There was a collective gasp and a rumble of murmuring from the theater, mostly the adults, and a few confused mumbles from the other children around Harry. Harry looked confusedly at his friends next to him, and Niall nodded. “It means he wasted his gift on another man,” he whispered gravely, leaning over Jade. Niall was a few months older than Harry, and had already moved up a year in his lessons, leaving Harry and Jade behind in the 10-years-olds’ lessons.

“In the early hours of this day,” the voice from the stage echoed through the theater again, “Joseph was caught in the act of homosexuality with another man, Connor, husband of Cindy. As we all know, this is a sin of the highest offense. Homosexuality is considered a direct attack on the mission of this Community, and under the direction of the sun, the moon, and the flame, cannot be tolerated.”

Harry finally spotted the man speaking, off to the corner of the stage, staring stoically out into the audience. He was a Leader, by the look of his soft yellow robes, face partially hidden by his hood. Beside him was a weeping woman, hiding her face with one hand, shoulders shaking.

There was another quiet murmur from the crowd, and the man on the platform lowered his head even more, his entire body trembling.

“What about the other guy?” Harry asked Niall, keeping his voice low.

“Probably already killed himself,” Niall whispered back. “May the sun have mercy.”

“Indubitably,” Harry breathed perfunctorily, turning his attention back to the doomed man.

“Joseph,” the Leader said, finally turning to look at the man on the platform. “What have you to say to the Community before you?”

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, barely audible.

“What have you to say to the sun?” the Leader insisted.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said again.

“Have you any other words?” the Leader said, giving one last, weighty pause.

“By the light of the sun, please forgive me for what I have done,” Joseph said, rehearsed. Harry knew those words well; they were trained in their lessons to say it every time they so much as put a toe out of line, but he never imagined they’d have as much weight here as they did every time he interrupted a lesson by sneezing.

“May the sun have mercy,” the Leader said, turning slowly away from Joseph. “Indubitably,” the audience chanted back, and then a heavy silence fell over the room.

“Joseph, you have betrayed your position as a man of the Community,” the Leader said. “From the sun’s light, from this point on, you are Denounced.”

Joseph finally looking up and out into the audience. His eyes swept over the children in the first few rows, and his face turned even sadder than before, but he didn’t flinch when finally three more robed men emerged from the shadows behind him and stepped up onto the platform with him.

“Find the truth,” he said quietly, and Harry felt his words burn down his spine, though he had no idea what they meant.

What followed then has been forever ingrained into Harry’s memory; the thick rope being wound around Joseph’s neck, the screech of the platform being removed from under his feet, the sharp sound of his neck snapping. There wasn’t so much as a moment of silence for him. The moment he was dead, the audience began to swell, shuffling solemnly out of the theater.

It comes back to Harry often, even still, nearly eight years later. Every time he even glances over towards the theater, he can hear the snapping of that poor sinner’s neck, and it sickens him even to this day.

-

It takes a moment for all of the children to file into the cafeteria, youngest first, oldest last. Harry’s nearly at the very back of the line now, only two people behind him now. Though Niall turned 18 months ago, the oldest girl of the Community won’t be 18 until next week, and Niall has been forced to wait for her. He still sleeps in the gymnasium, even though technically he isn’t a child anymore — it is considered unlawful for a person to sleep alone, as privacy fosters curiosity, and curiosity is one of the greatest sins. Niall doesn’t seem to mind it, though, has always enjoyed the company of the gymnasium, and Harry fears that when he does leave, he’s going to get terribly lonely with only one person to talk to at any given time.

In front of Niall is Jade, Niall’s soon-to-be wife. She’s a nice girl, polite, but cracks her fair share of jokes when the Maidens aren’t around. Harry, Niall and her have been best friends for as long as any of them can remember, and for Harry, the thought of the two of them being married in just a few days is rather unsettling. Maybe it’s because Harry knows he’s next, or maybe it’s because he knows that he’s going to have to wait until June, but it all feels very sudden and Harry’s not sure he’s ready for it.

Well, he is ready for it, obviously. He’s been waiting for it his entire life, figured out who his wife was going to be when he was about six years old, and it’s been in the back of his mind ever since. Her name is Ava, she’s got blonde hair and a tiny mouth, and Harry’s never spoken to her even once. She avoids him at all costs, because she knows, too, and the idea must be just as unsettling to her as it is to Harry.

There are two more boys between Harry and Ava, and about six more after her. Harry supposes he’s lucky he’s only got to wait until June, because Samuel has got to wait over a year until Mia turns 18.

Mealtimes are about the only time they don’t have to be arranged in any particular order, so Harry settles in at his usual seat near the wall and rubs at his eyes a little bit while Niall sits down beside him, Jade across from them.

“Are you alright, Harry?” Jade asks, leaning her elbows on the table and watching him closely. “You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Harry says, looking away quickly when a Maiden walks by and swats Jade’s shoulder for having her elbows on the table.

“That’s what you get for staring at the ceiling all night long,” Niall says. “Honestly, do you ever sleep?”

“Of course I sleep,” Harry says, glaring over at him.

“There’s a lot going on in that head of yours, I bet,” Jade says, reaching across the table to poke Harry’s nose. “Not just a pretty face, are you?”

“Don’t you ever, like, wonder?” Harry says, knowing full well that they’ve had this conversation a million times. “Just think about it! The _whole_ world, it’s just… out there. And we’re just… in here.”

“Here we go again,” Niall sighs, rolling his eyes.

“Lower your voice,” Jade says, glancing over her shoulder. “If the Maidens hear you-”

“I know, I know, curiosity,” Harry says, waving her off. “You really think this is what the sun wants from us, though? For us to be caged in like this when there’s a whole world out there?”

Jade widens her eyes at him and then averts her gaze, and Niall takes over quickly. “Yes, Harry, the weather is lovely today,” Niall says, giving the Maiden that suddenly appears over Harry’s shoulder his most charming smile. The Maiden gives him an odd look, and then starts unloading the dishes on her tray.

“Potatoes,” she says, placing a dish down in front of each of them. “With steamed carrots and pickled beets.”

As soon as the Maiden turns away, Harry swats at Niall’s arm. “It’s snowing, you idiot,” Harry says. “Lovely weather? That was your cover?”

“Oh, let him be,” Jade says, popping a beet in her mouth. “He’s not the one talking heresy.”

“It’s not heresy to wonder,” Harry mutters, stabbing a carrot with too much force. 

“But it is a sin,” Niall says, shrugging one shoulder. “You’ve got to be careful, Harry. You don’t want to get Denounced a month before you become an adult, hey?”

“Whatever,” Harry sighs. “The potatoes are good, at least. A blessing from the sun,” he says, slightly mocking.

“Indubitably,” Niall and Jade say at the same time, in the same mocking tone. The three of them dissolve into giggles, and a Maiden shoots them a glare from across the room, but she lets them be, the candles on each of the tables flickering just enough to let them finish their dinner as the sun completely abandons the sky.

-

Later that night, as Harry’s trying to fall asleep, his thought from dinner comes back to him once more. He stares up at the ceiling, the darkness blooming into a grassy field, like the courtyard, but bigger, endless, sprawling hills and flowers that turn into pinpricks of bright colors the closer to the horizon they get. 

He doesn’t have a single reference as to what the world outside the compound might look like, but it doesn’t stop him from dreaming. Art was banned along with written words long ago; Harry’s never so much as seen a drawing of what the world looked like before it died, hasn’t even an inkling about what could be out there, beyond the walls. Maybe the Leaders are right, maybe it’s bad, and scary, and needs to be repopulated with the goodness they’re breeding in the Community. Or maybe it’s still burning with anarchy, waiting for the Community to grow strong enough to break free and defeat it. Harry wants it, any of it, whichever version is the truth. He wants to be the hero the world needs, wants to be the good that defeats the evil, wants, more than absolutely anything else, to make the sun happy. He doesn’t want the world to die again, doesn’t want to disappoint the sun a second time. He just wants out of this gymnasium, he thinks, the sound of a single crying child boring right into his last nerve.

But then again, getting out of this gymnasium means getting right into bed with Ava, which doesn’t really seem like a great option, either. Not that he has a choice, and he understands that. He wishes things could be different, but they aren’t. The Maidens, after all, say that this is what the sun wants, this is the way it has to be so that the sun won’t make the world die again, and Harry doesn’t have a reason not to trust them.

There’s a rustle from the bed beside him, and he looks over to find Jade’s wide eyes watching him in the dark. “Stop it,” she whispers, smiling sadly at him. “Go to sleep.”

Harry smiles back at her, turning over onto his side to face her. Niall is already sound asleep in the bed adjacent to Harry’s, snoring quietly into his pillow, so Harry closes his eyes and tries to match his breathing. He’ll miss this, he thinks, when Niall and Jade get married in a few day’s time and move into the dormitory. He thinks of Ava, sound asleep in her own bed a few rows over, tries to imagine himself lying next to her instead of Jade, matching his breathing to hers instead of Niall’s. 

It doesn’t feel right, but it must be.


	3. Chapter 3

“Cheer up, Harry,” Jade says, moving her chair closer to his so that she can hug him sideways. “You’re making me sad.”

“I deserve to be sad,” Harry pouts, pushing the food around on his plate. “I have exactly two friends in the world, and tomorrow they’re going to get married to each other and leave me,” he says.

“Only for a few months,” Niall says, watching Jade nervously for a moment. “And then you and Ava will be right next to us.”

“Will you stop looking at me like that?” Jade says, glaring at Niall. “We’ve known this was coming since we were toddlers.”

“Exactly,” Niall mutters, looking away quickly. “I’ve known you my whole life, and tomorrow we have to…”

“That’s tomorrow,” Jade says, hugging Harry a little tighter. “Today is today, and I’m still 17.”

“I hate this,” Harry grumbles. “After tomorrow, I won’t see you for six entire months. What if Jade’s pregnant by then? Oh, the next time I see you, you could be a _Mother_.”

Jade doesn’t say anything, just slowly retracts her arms. The three of them sit in silence for a moment, all staring at their untouched breakfast plates, lost in thought.

“You know,” Jade says quietly, after a moment, “in the days of anarchy, Mothers and Fathers raised their own babies? Together?”

“That’s weird,” Niall says. “I can’t imagine raising a child.”

“Me either,” Jade says. She shudders, suddenly, looking up at Niall worriedly. “What if-”

“It’ll be fine,” Niall says firmly. “We’ve talked about this. We’re both healthy, perfectly fine young people.”

“I hope you’re right,” Jade mutters, curling in on herself a little. “I don’t want to be a Maiden, I don’t-”

“Hey,” Harry says, touching her arm. Jade flinches, looking up at him. “You won’t. You’ve got ages, anyhow.”

Jade nods slowly, apparently lost in thought, dragging her fork through her peach preserves in tiny, mindless circles.

It doesn’t feel right, Harry thinks. It’s not the first time he’s thought it, and it certainly won’t be the last. He wants to cry, thinking about how Niall and Jade must be feeling right now. It’s hard to accept the fact that they’re all just machines for childbearing, every single person in this room. He looks up after a moment, catches Ava’s eye from across the room, and for the first time in his entire life, she doesn’t look away. She blinks at him slowly, and then at Jade, her eyes catching on the back of Niall’s head before she lowers her eyes.

There are people in this room that can’t wait to be in Niall and Jade’s positions, people that can’t wait to become of age so that they can finally begin their life’s mission of pleasing the sun. Harry wishes he was one of them, wishes so, so much that he could find meaning and happiness in all of this the way some other people do, but he can’t, he just can’t, so he directs his gaze away from Ava’s downtrodden face and stares out the window for a while.

The sky is so bright, or at least the bit of it that he can see. There’s one long, dazzling strip of blue right above the compound wall, not a single cloud obstructing his vision of it. He wonders if there’s anything out there, the same way he wonders if there’s anything beyond the walls. He wonders if there’s another world out there, somewhere, hidden in all that blue, where the people are free, where the sun doesn’t have to keep them in a cage until they’ve learned to behave themselves. 

When breakfast is over, they line up for the walk back to the main building for one last day of lessons before tomorrow. They’ll all have the day off for the wedding, and the whole day will be dedicated to the celebration of the new couple. They’ll form a path with their bodies for Niall and Jade to walk together from the chapel to the dormitory, where they’ll be given their own room and then left alone to get to work. It makes Harry sick just to think about, turning around to glance at Jade over his shoulder, and Niall over hers. 

They separate wordlessly, all of the children branching off to go to their respective classrooms for the daily lessons. Niall is the only one who takes the staircase down instead of up, heading to the gymnasium, since he’s no longer required to go to classes now that he’s an adult. Harry and Jade, along with all of the other 17 year olds, head up to the third floor, where a Maiden is waiting for them with the same bloody lesson as every other day.

The day after tomorrow, Harry’s going to be the very last person in line, the very last person in the back corner of the room, where Jade is now. 

He catches Ava looking at him a few more times throughout the course of the day, and she catches him doing the same, and though she can clearly see the curiosity in Harry’s gaze, she doesn’t return it, nor does she seem afraid of it. If anything, she just seems blank, watching Harry like he’s not even really there, like he’s only a figment of her imagination, or something.

He’s never even heard her voice. At least Niall and Jade know each other, get along with each other, have some semblance of familiarity with each other. Ava might as well be a ghost, for all Harry knows, just something that exists for the sun to use to cast a shadow.

-

It’s an abnormally quiet night, even though Harry knows for a fact that no one in his corner of the gymnasium is sleeping. He can hear Jade tossing and turning every few minutes like clockwork in the bed beside his own, and Niall’s breathing is still quiet and uneven where the head of his bed is pushed up against Harry’s. Harry is just staring up into the black abyss of the ceiling, begging his mind to let him imagine something, anything except losing his two best friends tomorrow.

The ceiling seems darker than ever tonight, and it’s playing tricks on his mind. The Maidens are up to something in the library; there’s a lot of commotion, a lot of footsteps and hurried shuffling, and a weird humming sound that Harry slowly becomes aware of. 

He mostly pays it no mind, eyes still unfocused on the ceiling. No matter how hard he tries, his mind just keeps wandering back to the image of Niall and Jade wrapped up together in the dark in a bed big enough for two, knocking the headboard against the wall in a steady rhythm, just like everyone else in the building, on a never ending quest to make the sun happy. 

He imagines Jade with a round little belly, imagines her with the same exhausted demeanor that every Mother Harry’s ever encountered seems to carry with her. He imagines himself and Ava in the same situation, imagines Ava with that belly, with those tired eyes, imagines rushing her to the infirmary and helping her give birth, and all the while her tiny little mouth is screwed shut, eyes wide open but unseeing, expression carefully, meticulously blank.

Maybe he should just accept it. Maybe he should stop thinking so much, and just get used to the fact that this is how life works, this is what the sun wants, and there’s no way out of it without the world dying again.

He’s just about to finally close his eyes and let himself fall asleep when the gymnasium door bursts open, and the sound of heavy shoes running across the wooden floor makes his blood run cold. Before he can react, the humming sound that’s been at the back of his mind intensifies, and suddenly, the gymnasium is flooded with light.


	4. Chapter 4

The youngest children start screaming immediately. Harry wrenches his eyes shut, his whole head aching suddenly from the sudden brightness. He can’t even see, painfully blinded, but he blinks his eyes open in short, staggered intervals to confirm that, yes, the overhead lights in the ceiling have been turned on.

“Sun, have mercy,” Niall mutters, sitting up quickly behind Harry. Harry sits up, too, squinting over at him, and then at Jade, who has turned into a trembling lump hidden completely under her bedsheets.

“Don’t panic!” says a loud, unfamiliar voice. Harry frantically looks around for the source of it, but it’s so, so bright, he’s still seeing stars.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” says a different voice, a girl’s voice, loud but smooth, calming. “Please settle down.”

It takes a moment, but when Harry’s eyes finally adjust to the light, he finds a handful of strangers dressed in odd, dark clothes, walking around the gymnasium trying to soothe the children. None of the strangers look much older than Harry himself, but they look so different from any human Harry’s ever seen, he doesn’t understand how they’re real. At least two of them are boys, and possibly a third, but the third one has long hair like a girl, and hair on their face, as well. Harry’s never seen a man with such long hair before; in the Community they’re required to keep their hair above their ears, and Harry’s only ever seen facial hair on the Leaders. The other two are definitely girls, but one of them has hair curlier than Harry’s ever seen, and when she turns around, her skin is dark, and her features are exotic, absolutely unlike anything Harry’s ever seen. The other girl is just as gorgeous, long, blonde hair and angry eyes.

“Everyone listen,” one of the boys shouts, and Harry turns quickly to find that he’s standing up on one of the empty beds, eyes scanning the gymnasium to ensure that he has everyone’s attention. He can’t be much older than Harry; he’s quite small, and he’s got golden skin and honey brown, dirty looking hair. His eyes are sharp and bright, and he’s only a few beds away, so when his gaze lands on Harry, it sends chills right down his spine.

There are no strangers. In the Community, everyone knows everyone, and every face is a familiar face. They’re the only people in the world, or so they’ve always been told, and seeing an unfamiliar face is an experience Harry has quite literally never had before. Even the Leaders, who are almost never seen by members of the Community, are familiar; everyone sort of looks the same, wears the same soft, loose clothing, has the same haircut and neatly trimmed fingernails and sturdy gray shoes.

This boy, though, the one standing on a bed only a few feet from Harry, has on a tight black shirt, a form fitting canvas jacket, and dark, thick trousers with pockets all the way down. He’s got some sort of long, tapered stick strapped to his back, just like the others, who Harry quickly glances around to keep tabs on. 

The two girls have positioned themselves by the gymnasium doors, holding their own tapered sticks in their hands. The other two boys are pacing up and down the rows of beds, reassuring all of the children, but the first boy demands everyone’s attention again before Harry can pass very much judgement on the others.

“Listen!” the golden skinned boy shouts, eyes sweeping over everyone again. “I know you’re scared, and you have every right to be, but you don’t have to be. We are here to help you.”

“Heathens!” shrieks a little boy from across the gymnasium, voice shrill and shaking. Harry recognizes him, of course; his name is Jacob, he’s 8 years old, and he is absolutely devout to the Community’s mission.

“I know that’s what they call us,” the golden skinned boy says, holding out a hand as if to physically quell Jacob’s fear. “But they’re wrong. They’re brainwashing you. Whatever they’re telling you in here, they’re lying to you. There are other people out there, other people just like you, like _us_ , and you don’t have to live this way anymore,” he says.

“Make it fast, Tommo,” the blonde girl shouts from over by the door, her grip tightening on the thing in her hands. 

“We’re here to liberate you,” the golden skinned boy says. “There are more of us out there, all over the world, on every continent.”

Harry doesn’t know what those words mean, liberate, continent, but it sounds like this boy is confirming everything Harry’s ever wondered about, and it makes hope swell in his chest.

“Leave us be!” shouts a young girl, Sarah, 13 years old.

“They’ve told you that you’re the only people on Earth, right?” the boy, Harry assumes his name is Tommo, says. “They told you that it’s your job to repopulate the Earth, because everyone else is dead?”

There’s a brief silence from the sea of children, some confused glances between them. Harry meets Niall’s eyes, barely hears it when Niall whispers, “Earth?”

“God,” Tommo breathes, another strange word to Harry’s ears. “It’s worse than we imagined.”

“What he’s trying to say,” says the dark-skinned girl, “is that this place is bullshit. It’s inhumane, and it’s wrong, and you’re being punished for something you didn’t do, for something that doesn’t even exist,” she says.

“We’re trying to make it right,” Tommo says, regaining the gymnasium’s attention. “We want to help you escape from this prison, and show you that there’s more to the world than what’s inside these walls.”

Harry flinches, turning quickly to look at Niall. Niall looks stunned, staring up at Tommo, like he can’t quite believe it, either.

“Now, Tommo!” the blonde girl screams, pointing her tapered stick at the double doors. “We’ve got to go _now_!”

“Come with us, please!” Tommo says, holding one fist in the air. “This is your one and only chance to escape. We can help you, and if you help us, we can put an end to this all.”

“We don’t believe you!” Jacob screams. “Heathens! Heathens!”

“There are cities!” Tommo argues, jumping down off of the bed and pacing up and down the row, the breeze of his quick march ruffling Harry’s hair as he passes. “There are rivers! And forests! Oceans, beaches, mountains, a whole world that you’ve never even imagined!”

Harry has to know. He has to. He hasn’t a single clue what any of those things are, but they sound magical, they sound like the things he sees when he looks up at the ceiling at night, and suddenly, he cannot bear the thought of living another day without knowing them. What has he got to lose, anyway? This is impulsive, and incredibly dangerous, but like Tommo said, this is his only chance. Tomorrow, he’s going to lose his best friends, and in a few months he’s going to have to marry Ava and spend the rest of his life a slave to the Community. This is it, he knows it is, this is what he’s always dreamed of, and to think, he was right all along!

“Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.”

Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium.

“Yes!” Tommo cheers, waving him on. “Quickly, it’s now or never!”

“Harry,” Jade says, horrified. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says, grabbing his coat from under his bed and stuffing himself into it. “But I’m not staying here.”

“Don’t be crazy,” Niall says, voice low. “Think about this. For all you know, they’re going to take you outside and murder you.”

“Then so be it,” Harry says, backing away. “They say we don’t have to live like this. I’m willing to take that chance,” he says, eyes flicking quickly between Niall and Jade.

Jade’s breath catches a little, like she’s going to cry, and she looks over at Niall, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she says, throwing the covers off her body and getting up, too.

“What?” Niall hisses, looking frantic. “Have you both lost your minds?”

“Maybe,” Jade says, grabbing her coat and Harry’s hand. “Maybe.”

“May the sun have mercy,” Niall mutters, scrambling out of bed, as well, and grabbing Jade’s free hand with his own.

“You don’t have time to think!” the blonde girl by the door shouts, waving on the few children that have hesitantly gotten up, too. “We’ve got to go, right now!”

“Come on, everyone,” Tommo says, leading the way to the door. “Steve, Liam, flank. We’re going to have to run for it.”

“Fucking finally,” the blonde girl says, waiting hardly another second for everyone to congregate by the door before she kicks it open, pulling the end of the tool in her hands so it clicks before leading the way out and up the stairs.

It all happens so quickly, but Harry doesn’t let go of Jade’s hand, and she doesn’t let go of Niall. The whole group scurries up the stairs and straight out of the building, sprinting across the compound to the shadowy area behind the theater, where there’s a long, flimsy looking ladder hanging over the top of the compound wall.

Harry doesn’t think, he just climbs, following the blonde girl all the way up. He can hear Jade right behind him, praying quietly to the sun, but Harry keeps his mind dutifully blank as he reaches the top of the wall and swings himself over, just like the blonde girl did a second before. 

He spares one last look at the compound, eyes sweeping from east to west, taking in the aerial view. It looks almost peaceful, like this, in the dark of the night. The very last thing he notices before he goes over the other side of the wall is that the apartment building, where the leaders live, is lit up the same way the gymnasium was, with the same electric lights.

Climbing down is scarier than climbing up, solely because Harry has no idea what he’s going to see when he hits the ground. He keeps his eyes trained on his feet, mind trained on his mission, until finally, finally, he hits the last rung of the ladder and falls the last few feet to the ground, landing hard on the dirt. 

He turns slowly, taking in his surroundings, eyes immediately drifting upward. There are trees everywhere, taller than Harry every imagined they could be, so much taller than the fruit trees scattered around the courtyard. It’s dark out, but Harry can see the moon through the bare branches above his head, and he’s unable to stop looking at it, even when the blonde girl grabs him roughly by the arm and starts dragging him away from the wall.

It’s a few minutes of running before they break through the trees, and Harry comes to a screeching halt. The world goes on for absolutely ever, even in the dark, and it’s everything he pictured it would be. He can see the horizon, way out there in the distance, dotted with little trees and hills and it’s beautiful, it’s so beautiful Harry wants to cry.

“What the fuck,” the blonde girl says, pulling Harry’s arm again. “C’mon, kid, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Sorry,” Harry breathes, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Jade and Niall are still behind them. Jade is crying, fat tears streaming down her cheeks, staring out at the world, too.

“By the sun,” she whispers, grabbing Harry’s hand and squeezing tight. “Harry, you were right.”

“Come on,” says another voice, and Harry looks up to find Tommo passing them, slinging his tapered tool back over his shoulder. “They’re waiting for us in the truck.”

They’re a rather small group, only two other children from the compound in addition to Harry, Niall and Jade. One of them is Amelia, a rather defiant 12 year old; she’s constantly in trouble with the Maidens, always fighting with someone about something, so Harry’s not very surprised to find her here. The other is a 16 year old, Robert. Harry’s a little more surprised about him, he’s never heard the kid say more than two words, but then again, he supposes anyone other than Niall and Jade would think the same of Harry himself.

They walk another few minutes, over the crest of a small hill, and then Harry spots another stranger standing beside what appears to be a small, metal house on wheels.

“Thank fuck,” says the new stranger, a woman with a round face and long hair. She surveys the tiny gaggle of them and then turns to Tommo, frowning. “This is it? This is all you got?”

“Well, we didn’t have much time,” Tommo says, glaring at the boy beside him. “Liam wanted to steal a couple babies, first, which got us caught right quick.”

“I didn’t think they’d all start crying at once!” Liam says. “But, yeah, they kind of started a panic in the caregivers.”

“Right, in the truck, all of you,” the long haired girl says, swinging open the back door of the little house. Harry hesitates, glancing at Niall, but Tommo touches his shoulder gently. 

“It’s alright, Jesy isn’t that terrible of a driver,” he says playfully. “Our camp is a bit of a hike away, so we’ve got to drive.”

“Right,” Harry says, throat dry, glancing at Niall and Jade one more time before climbing into the back of the truck.

“What is going on?” Niall whispers, as soon as he’s settled down on the floor beside Harry. “I don’t like this.”

Jade looks a bit pale as she climbs in, too, pressing herself into Niall’s side. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes her eyes shut, and knots a hand in the front of Niall’s shirt.

It takes a few minutes for everyone to get situated, the five refugees on one side of the truck, the five strangers on the other. Harry digs his fingernails into the palm of his hand as the truck rumbles to life and lurches forward, sending them all bumping about into each other.

“Welcome to the outside,” Tommo says, smiling brightly at the five of them. “Well, welcome to the truck.”

“Where are we going?” Niall asks, still holding Jade close.

“Back to our camp in London,” Tommo says. “We’ve got food and shelter there for you, you’ll be safe.”

“And what do you want from us?” Niall asks. 

“Uh,” Tommo says, glancing awkwardly at the blonde girl, who is squished up between him and the long haired man.

“We want you to help us put an end to the cult,” the blonde girl says. 

“The cult?” Harry frowns. “What’s that?”

“The fuckshow we just saved you from,” the blonde girl says. “It’s a cult, hun.”

“Fuckshow?” Harry mutters, looking confusedly at Niall. 

“The Community,” Tommo says, a little more gently than the blonde girl’s tone. “They’re feeding you false information, trapping you in like animals and using you as pawns,” he says. “The whole world is aware of it, but no one knows how to put a stop to it. You guys are going to help us figure it out,” he says.

“Oh, moon have mercy,” Jade whispers, burying her face in Niall’s chest. “By the light of the sun, please forgive me for what I’ve done.”

“What?” the blonde girl frowns, gesturing to Jade. “What is she saying?”

“She’s praying,” Niall says, holding her a little more protectively. 

“We know how overwhelming this must be for you all,” says the dark skinned girl. 

“We just want to learn from you,” Tommo says, giving Jade a gentle smile. “My name is Louis, by the way,” he says. “Or you can call me Tommo, whatever you like.”

“I’m Perrie,” says the blonde haired girl, “this is Steve, Liam, and Leigh-Anne,” she says, pointing down the line.

No one says anything for a minute, until the silence gets awkward, and Louis shifts to nudge Harry’s knee with his foot. “What’s your name?” he asks, giving Harry a small smile when he looks up.

“Harry,” Harry says quietly, averting his eyes and glancing over at Niall. “Niall, Jade, Amelia, Robert.”

“What time is it?” Niall asks, directing the question at Louis. Liam shifts instead, though, pulling up his jacket sleeve and squinting at his watch.

“Almost 2 in the morning,” Liam says. 

Jade gasps quietly, and Harry grins. “Happy birthday,” he breathes, reaching over to hold her hand.

“It’s your birthday?” Louis says, lighting up. Jade nods, returning his smile hesitantly. “Mine was two days ago.”

“Happy late birthday, then,” Jade says. “How old are you?”

“20,” Louis says proudly. “You?”

“18,” Jade says, looking up at Niall. Niall smiles awkwardly, hand slipping from where it’s resting on her shoulder.

Harry looks away, fiddling with his hands in his lap. The air in the truck gets tense, but Jade, of all people, breaks the silence with a tiny laugh.

“Guess we got pretty lucky, huh?” she says, talking to Niall’s bent knee instead of his face. “Got out right in the nick of time.”

Niall flinches, giving a halfhearted chuckle and staying otherwise silent. Harry doesn’t move, doesn’t know how to dispel the tension, but before he even has a chance, Perrie pipes up.

“What’s that mean?” Perrie asks, watching the two of them curiously. It’s refreshing, seeing curiosity on someone’s face other than his own, but he wishes it wasn’t now.

No one answers for a moment, and the awkward silence drags on, until Amelia sighs. “They were supposed to get married today,” she says, earning herself the attention of everyone in the truck. “As soon as a boy and a girl have both turned 18, they get married so they can get to work making babies for the Community,” she explains.

“Jesus,” Louis mutters, rubbing at his face.

“That’s fucked up,” Leigh-Anne says, looking horrified. 

“If you don’t have a baby every two years, at least, you have to get divorced,” Amelia continues matter-of-factly. “Also-”

“Amelia,” Harry says, shooting her a glare. “Maybe not right now?”

“They asked,” Amelia shrugs, seemingly unaware of the way both Niall and Jade have gone completely rigid. 

“Well, you’re safe now,” Leigh-Anne says softly, meeting Jade’s eyes with a sweet smile. “That doesn’t have to happen anymore.”

“How long until the next couple turns 18?” Louis asks, sitting up a little. “Do we have time to save them?”

“Well,” Amelia says, “the next boy would be Harry, in February, and the next girl will be Ava in June,” she says. “Now Ava will have to marry Samuel, though. He’s next.”

“So we’ve got until June to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Louis says, glancing over at Perrie. 

“Mission accepted,” Perrie said, eyes stuck on Jade. 

The truck carries on for quite some time, jostling everyone around until the sun has nearly risen. Harry’s eyes burn in the light streaming through the dirty windows, but he doesn’t dare close them, eagerly watching the world pass by outside. Everyone else nods off at some point, and Niall is snoring into his shoulder, but Harry can’t possibly sleep, not when there’s a whole new realm of existence out here for him to explore.

He does let his cheek rest against the top of Niall’s head, though, and he does rest his eyes in short intervals, but only because it’s been so long since he’s had a proper night’s rest, and everyone else is asleep, anyway.

Everyone, that is, except for Louis, who is wide awake and watching him. Harry startles when he notices, picking his head up to blink at Louis quickly.

Louis just gives him a soft smile, nodding at him as if to tell him to put his head back down, to get some sleep. Harry doesn’t know why, but he trusts him, so he rests his cheek against the soft pillow of Niall’s hair again and slowly, slowly, drifts off to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry wakes up when the steady rumbling of the truck’s engine cuts out, the sudden silence jarring him out of sleep. He sits up quickly, trying to remember where he is, and Niall moans as he slips from where he was sleeping on Harry’s shoulder and whacks his head against the side of the truck.

“Cheers, Harry,” Niall mutters, rubbing at the back of his head and squinting up at him. Jade is still sound asleep mostly on top of him, and Amelia and Robert are waking up slowly, but Louis and his crew are already collecting their things and throwing open the back door.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” Louis says, when Harry’s eyes finally fall on him. 

They pile out of the truck slowly, all tired and stiff from being cooped up so long, and Harry’s eyes immediately go up, up, up, taking in his surroundings.

It’s like nothing he’s ever seen before. There are so many buildings, and they’re all so tall. Some of them are made out of brick, like the compound, but there are some that are gray, the same color as the street they’re standing on. Everything is a little faded, washed out, tired looking, and there isn’t a single other soul on the street with them.

“Where are all the people?” Harry asks, turning in a slow circle. “Is this it?”

“The people are sleeping,” Perrie says, looking very much like she’d like to join them as soon as possible. “It’s 6am.”

“What is this place?” Jade asks, pulling her coat closed around herself. The wind is bitterly cold, makes Harry’s hair stand on end, makes his bones ache a little.

“This is London,” Leigh-Anne says. “Or what’s left of it.”

“C’mon, let’s get inside, before we all freeze to death,” Louis says, ushering everyone away from the truck and into the building they’re standing in front of.

It’s less cold inside, but it’s still not exactly warm. Harry doesn’t stop taking in his surroundings for even a second, eyes sweeping over the room.

“This used to be a university,” Steve says, catching Harry’s eye. “It shut down ages ago, when the first round of the plague swept through London. Now it’s just empty.”

“You guys live here?” Harry asks. The floors are white marble, like the front steps of the main building in the compound, but so much prettier, though it looks poorly maintained and a little like it might all come crumbling down at any moment.

“Yup,” Louis says proudly, nodding to the row of turnstiles separating the lobby area from the staircase at the back. “Steve rigged up these card readers for security, so that only people from our group can get in,” he says, pulling a card out of his pocket and tapping it against the reader. The little fiberglass doors swing open, and then swing closed again once Louis has gone through. “Make sure you don’t leave without letting anyone know, or you won’t be able to get back in,” he explains.

“This place was a university?” Niall asks, looking skeptical. “The compound was a university, too, but it doesn’t look anything like this.”

“Different types of unis,” Perrie says, fishing for her own card in her pocket. “This one was a little more, uh, liberal, you could say. C’mon, then, everyone through.”

Once through the turnstiles, Louis and Perrie lead the way up the stairs, which wind around 360 degrees to the second floor landing. There’s a worn looking door that leads to a large open space, which is decorated sparsely with old, decrepit looking furniture and what appears to be personal belongings all over the place.

“This used to be the library, now we use it as a lounge,” Louis says, pushing through the door. “If you’re ever looking for someone, come here first. This is where we all spend most of our free time.”

Harry lets his eyes sweep over the room, gaze catching on one of the massive built-in shelves by the windows. He wanders over and inspects the contents of one of the shelves, picking up one of the small, box-like objects and lifting it open. It’s full of paper, all bound together at one side, and Harry frowns at it.

“You look like you’ve never seen a book before,” Louis jokes, suddenly right next to Harry. Harry startles, looking up at him.

“A what?”

“A book?” Louis frowns, amusement fading into shock. “Have you actually never seen a book before?”

“No,” Harry says, looking back down at the thing in his hands. “What’s it for?”

“Reading,” Louis says. “There’s all sorts of different ones, some have fictional stories, some are used for lessons,” he says.

“Reading is banned in the compound,” Harry mumbles, grip tightening on the book, like Louis might take it from him. “It’s thought to breed curiosity, which is a sin. Our lessons are given in lectures that the Maidens memorize,” he says.

“That’s mad,” Louis says, looking disgusted. “Reading is banned?”

“And writing,” Jade says from over Harry’s shoulder, inspecting the book, too. “And art. I was punished once as a child for making a picture in the dirt of Harry, Niall and me.”

Louis doesn’t say anything, just glances over at Perrie, who averts her eyes and changes the subject.

“Anyway, this is where you lot will be sleeping, at least for the time being,” she says, gesturing to the room as a whole. “We didn’t know how many of you we’d be getting, so we didn’t go to the trouble of setting anything up, but we’ll get you guys some beds as soon as possible,” she shrugs.

“We all sleep on the next floor up, in the old classrooms,” Leigh-Anne says, as she plops down on one of the sofas. She sends a plume of dust into the air, but she doesn’t seem bothered.

“Speakin’ of,” Jesy yawns, “ _some_ of us didn’t get a rest on the way home, so I vote for nap time.”

“Good idea, actually,” Louis says. “You all must be absolutely knackered, and probably terribly overwhelmed.”

“We could use a rest, I think,” Harry says, glancing over at his tired, anxious looking friends. He isn’t sure when he became the leader of the group, but Jade still looks about ready to cry and Niall is wandering aimlessly over by the windows, and Robert and Amelia just seem lost.

Louis and Leigh-Anne set off to get some blankets and pillows, while Perrie gets to work on starting a fire in what was probably once a very ornate fireplace. Harry makes his way over to Niall, bumping his shoulder with his own and offering him a small smile.

“Alright?” Harry asks, keeping his voice low so the others won’t hear as they go about setting up the makeshift beds.

“What are we doing?” Niall asks, staring determinedly out the window. 

“I don’t really know,” Harry says, following his line of vision. There isn’t much to see, just a couple of brick walls and a bit of the street beyond them. “But it’s better than being back there.”

Niall scoffs, folding his arms over his chest. “Is it?”

“Is it not?” Harry frowns. “Niall, you’d be getting married today, if we hadn’t left. You’d rather that?”

“No,” Niall says, shrugging one shoulder. “But at least I knew what was going to happen next.”

“So,” Louis says, catching their attention from the doorway, “the kitchen is in the basement, below the lobby. Let’s plan to meet there later on, so we can figure out our next move, yeah?” he says, eyes lingering on Niall and Harry a moment longer than everyone else.

With that, they’re left alone, and only the sound of the crackling fire fills the room. Harry spots Jade sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, all hunched in on herself the way she gets when she’s upset. Harry gives Niall one more nudge and then goes over to sit next to her, leaning back against the sofa behind him and silently watching the fire, too. Niall follows quickly, sitting down on Jade’s opposite side. The three of them probably make a sad picture, Harry thinks, especially when Jade melts into his side and tugs Niall into her arms, letting him rest his head on her shoulder.

Amelia and Robert make their way over eventually, as well. It’s odd, Harry thinks, as Amelia falls asleep on Niall’s thigh and Robert huddles close beside Harry against the bottom of the sofa; Harry’s known all of them forever, for as long as he can remember, and now they’re all he’s got left in the world. Harry doesn’t even know who his parents are, but he remembers the day Amelia was born like it was yesterday, just like he remembers the births of all the other children in the Community. There were less than 100 of them altogether, it isn’t hard to remember the days they got a new child. It was always a celebration, a ceremony of life, and then a big Community-wide picnic in the courtyard. It almost seems romantic when Harry thinks back to it, but now the memories are tinted with the knowledge that every new baby was bred, not born, to grow up and churn out more babies that would only ever go on to have the same future.

They all fall asleep like that, inevitably, curled up together on the floor in front of the fire. It’s not the most comfortable sleep Harry’s ever had, but for the first time in forever, Harry has no idea what will be waiting for him when he opens his eyes, and the excitement makes it worth the crick in his neck.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry’s the only one left by the fire when he wakes up a few hours later, but upon frantic inspection, he finds everyone else scattered about the room, still looking out of place but a little less exhausted than earlier. 

He takes his time stretching his limbs and then carefully climbs to his feet, shuffling over to where Niall and Jade are lounging silently on opposite ends of an old, overstuffed blue sofa. He plops down in the empty space in the middle, rubbing at his face for a moment until he’s fully awake.

“We’re supposed to meet them in the kitchen,” Jade says after a few long seconds. “We were just waiting on you to wake up.”

“Thanks,” Harry says, voice still gravelly with sleep. 

“Can we talk about this?” Niall says lowly. “About what we’re getting ourselves into?”

“I say we cooperate with them,” Harry says. “Do what they say, within reason. They want to shut down the Community, and I think we should help them.”

“That sounds great,” Jade says, “but it also sounds dangerous.”

“That’s true,” Harry says.

“What’s in it for us?” Niall asks. “Not to be that guy, but what do we care if they accomplish their goal? We’re already out of the Community, we could just as easily take off on our own,” he says.

“Also true,” Harry says, “but we have no idea what’s out there. We could die if we go off on our own. We’re totally unequipped to survive outside of the Community.”

Jade makes a little noise in the back of her throat, looking uncomfortable when Harry looks up at her. “Do you think that’s intentional?” she breathes. “You think they did that on purpose, so no one would be able to leave and survive on their own?”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s too far of a stretch,” Harry says.

“So what do you propose?” Niall asks, still looking skeptical. 

“I propose that we demand they teach us how to survive,” Harry says. “How to read, how to write, and whatever else the Community kept from us. And, in return, we’ll teach them about the Community and help them figure out how to shut it down.”

“But those things are sins,” Niall says, shaking his head.

“According to who?” Harry scoffs. “The people who also told you that there was nothing outside of the compound, and that we were the only people left alive in the entire world? I don’t know about you, but I’m taking everything they told us with a grain of salt,” he says.

“I guess you’re right,” Niall sighs, chewing on his lip. 

“Can we go downstairs now?” Amelia asks, looking longingly at the door. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Niall says, standing up without another word and heading straight out the door. Harry throws Jade a worried glance and then follows him out, all the way down past the lobby and into the basement of the building.

There are a few tables scattered around and a serving line like the cafes in the compound, with the actual kitchen sectioned off behind a counter. Jesy and Liam are doing the cooking, and everyone else is gathered around the large table at the back of the room, talking quietly.

Perrie spots them first, and quickly interrupts Louis’s hushed voice to call out to them. “Finally,” she says, gesturing to the empty spots around the table for them all to have a seat. “We were beginning to think you’d all escaped out the window and left.”

“Harry slept for bloody ages,” Amelia complains, plopping right down at the table. “Have you got anything to eat?”

“Jesy and Liam are working on lunch,” Louis says, as everyone else gets settled in. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

“We’ve got some business to discuss first,” Perrie says, leaning back in her chair and glancing over at Louis.

“Right,” Louis says. “I was thinking we could outline our plan first, you can tell us what you want from us, and we’ll negotiate after,” he says. “Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect,” Harry says, adopting Perrie’s careless stature and leaning back his chair, like his and his friends’ lives and futures aren’t resting upon the outcome of this conversation. “Go on.”

“Right,” Louis says, smirking at Harry like he can see right through him. “We really just want to learn everything we can from you guys,” he says, “you know, how the Community works and how the people inside feel about it. We think that if we can get the word out to the rest of the world about what the Community really is and what they’re doing, we can get enough people on board to help us shut it down once and for all.”

“Sounds simple enough,” Harry says, crossing his arms over his chest. “But we have a few demands in return for our help.”

Louis looks amused, but not patronizingly so, somehow. He looks intrigued, watching Harry like he’s some kind of exotic creature that fascinates him, and Harry tries not to wither under the attention. 

“Go on, then,” Louis says, nodding once.

“We want to be taught to read and write,” Harry says. Louis blinks at him, as if expecting more, so Harry glances quickly at Niall and then goes on. “We want to be given the skills necessary to survive in the world,” he says, shifting uncomfortably when Louis just blinks at him again.

“That’s it?” Louis says, after an awkward pause. “Well, shit, mate, we would have done that anyway,” he says, smirking at Perrie.

Jade drops a fist loudly on the table, earning everyone’s attention quickly. “We want to know everything,” she says, voice firm. Harry watches in shock; Jade has never spoken up like this in her life, but she seems adamant, and the others seem willing to listen to her. “We want to know the history of the world, before and after the apocalypse, and we want lessons on everything we need to know to survive independently. We also want full access to all of your resources, and the freedom to come and go as we please. And we absolutely demand the right to decide to stop cooperating with you at any point, should we feel that we need to,” she says, staring Louis down as if daring him to argue with her.

There’s a long, heavy pause, and Harry’s attention shifts from his own bewilderment at Jade’s demands to the shocked expressions of everyone on the other side of the table.

“I like her,” Perrie decides, face splitting into a grin. 

“Me too,” Louis says, looking proud, reaching out to shake Jade’s hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal, love.”

Jade eyes his hand for a moment before grasping it firmly, narrowing her eyes at him. “Don’t call me love,” she says, voice low, dropping Louis’s hand once he nods his understanding.

Perrie whistles quietly, impressed, and Louis grins, meeting Harry’s eyes quickly before looking away. “Welcome to the resistance,” he says, eyes bright.

“Right, loves, lunch is ready,” Jesy calls a moment later, piling plates of food onto the serving counter. “Come get it, before it’s gone cold.”

They don’t mention the mission again during lunch, and the conversation stays light and friendly. Harry stays quiet, for the most part, shoveling his food into his mouth like he hasn’t eaten in a week and keeping his eyes on the table. Niall nudges him a few times to try and get his attention, and he can feel Louis’s eyes boring holes into his skull with the intensity of his glare, but Harry feels as though he’s somehow handed off control of the group to Jade, and he’s alright with it. Now that the responsibility is off his shoulders, and Jade has taken it into her careful, gentle hands, he feels like they’re a lot better off. The shift in dynamic is obvious, he thinks, but Louis continues watching him throughout the entire meal, addressing him like he’s the head of his little band of refugees, and though Jade doesn’t seem to have a problem butting in and taking over, Louis still seems to only want Harry’s attention.

The thing is, Harry doesn’t know what they’re doing. He saw an opportunity to get out, and he took it, and now that they’re here, he hasn’t a clue what to do next. Jade clearly does, though, and has no problem accepting that responsibility, and Harry feels foolish for ever acting like he was the one in charge, in the first place. Harry wants to watch the Community crumble more than anyone else in the world, he thinks, but he hasn’t a clue of how to go about making it happen. He supposes they’ll figure it out as they go along, or at least he hopes they will, because they’ve got a side of this deal to hold up now and if they want to keep everything Jade just demanded, they better find a way to start lifting.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry doesn’t sleep very well that night, curled up under a blanket on the floor beside Niall in front of the sofa that Jade is peacefully sleeping on. They gave Amelia the other sofa, and Robert is sprawled out on the rug by the fireplace, but Harry is too afraid to be any more than a few feet away from Niall and Jade at any given time, so he’s perfectly fine with reaching up to push Jade’s foot back up onto the sofa every time it flops down near his face.

He’s quickly realizing how out of his depth he is. He doesn’t know what he was thinking when he decided to get out of his bed last night, but he knows that he left every semblance of safety and security he’s ever known tangled up in his thin, worn bedsheets in that dark gymnasium. Every time he opens his eyes he expects to find the black expanse of nothingness between him and the gymnasium ceiling, but instead he sees the chipped, peeling paint of the university lounge, dim but still illuminated with moonlight.

It’s too bright to sleep, he decides. That, and he had a massive nap earlier, and he’s scared out of his fucking mind, to top it all off. He rolls onto his side, away from Niall and away from the windows, letting his eyes unfocus while he thinks.

He wonders about the Community, what he’d be doing now if he was still there. He’d be alone in the gymnasium, for one thing, and Niall and Jade would be getting busy in their own room across the compound. He’d probably be lying awake there, too, staring up at the ceiling, dreading every day until June, and then every day after it, as well. Thinking about it that way doesn’t make his current situation seem half bad, until he remembers that they’re all alone in a place they didn’t even know existed, being led by a bunch of kids who aren’t much older than themselves, and not a single one of them knows what’s going to happen next. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t know which position is better, but he supposes he doesn’t have a choice.

The night lasts forever, and the world wakes up slowly; Harry watches the wall opposite the window turn red, orange, yellow and then white when the sun finally gets up over all the buildings, and he can to hear the shuffling about of everyone waking up upstairs. He turns over onto his back and slowly stretches out all of his limbs, sore and creaky from lying on the floor all night.

He waits until he hears someone pass the lounge and then gets up to follow them, creeping silently past everyone else and out of the lounge. He follows the sound of jaunty footsteps all the way down to the kitchen, half hoping it’s Louis for some reason he can’t quite put his finger on, and then pauses once inside the kitchen door.

It’s Liam, Harry finds, humming quietly under his breath while he hunts through the cupboards. Harry takes a step forward and the movement must catch Liam’s eye, because he gasps and whirls around.

“Oh, jeez,” Liam says, putting a hand over his heart. “You made me jump. Harry, right? Want some cereal?” he asks, holding up a colorful cardboard box.

“Sure,” Harry says, shuffling a little closer. He isn’t quite sure what cereal is, but he’s intrigued by the concept of it not being porridge, which he’s been fed every morning for his entire life. Liam pours two bowls and then fills them with water, handing one over to Harry with a spoon.

“Sorry,” Liam says, shrugging one shoulder. “I know a lot of people think water with cereal is gross, but we don’t have any access to milk here,” he says.

“Oh,” Harry says, blinking down at his bowl. He doesn’t know the difference; he doesn’t even know what milk is, actually. “That’s fine.”

“How’d you sleep?” Liam asks, leading the way to the big table at the back. 

“Alright,” Harry lies, taking the seat across from Liam and playing with his cereal a little. “Kinda hard to sleep on the floor.”

“I hear you,” Liam says through a mouthful of food. “I think part of the agenda for today is figuring out a better lodging situation for you lot, but we’ll see what else Louis and Perrie have in mind,” he shrugs.

“So, Louis and Perrie are the leaders, then?” Harry asks. “Like, they’re in charge?”

“If you ask them, yes,” Liam says playfully. “But, yeah, they’re kind of the ones that keep everything moving smoothly. Louis’s more of the leader type, and Perrie’s more of the enforcer. He’s brilliant, and she’s scary when she’s cross,” he says.

“And the rest of you?” Harry asks, finally trying a bite of his cereal.

“Well, none of us really have defined roles,” Liam says. “But I guess you could consider me kind of a handyman, fix-it type guy. The muscles to Louis’s brain, you could say,” he smirks. “Steve and Jesy are the engineers, the real mathematical type, problem solvers. Leigh-Anne is like our liaison, she has connections all over the place, always keeps us in the loop whenever anything big happens in the world. We’re quite isolated, as you can tell, so it’s important for us to stay up to date with everything,” he says.

“How did you all meet?” Harry asks. He’s aware that he’s just about interrogating Liam, but he doesn’t really know what else to talk to him about, and Liam doesn’t really seem bothered by the questions, so he figures it’s alright.

“We were part of a bigger group in east London that got decimated a while back,” Liam says. “We’re more of the internationalist type, you know, sharing the world with others and doing our part to build it back up. Some groups out there are a little more territorial, though, like your Community, and a lot of them are very violent to defend their beliefs. Our group got into a bit of a scuffle with one of those groups a few years ago, and it ruined us pretty good. There were only a couple dozen of us left alive after it was all said and done and we disbanded for our own safety, and our little squad ended up down here and we decided to just make a home of it. We spent a while figuring out our goal and our next moves and we eventually decided to take a page from our enemies’ book and start pushing for a more connected world, and one way we figure we can do that is by taking down groups like your Community, who actively represent everything we think shouldn’t exist,” he says. “The world before the apocalypse was riddled with hate and xenophobia, and now we have a chance to build it all differently, and we think that’s a chance worth taking,” he shrugs again.

“That’s beautiful,” Harry says, a surge of hope swelling in his chest for the world Liam just described, a world that’s peaceful and friendly and free for all. He can’t believe that the Community was doing something so nefarious right under his nose, and he was expected to just be a part of it without ever really knowing why he was doing it.

“Good morning, everyone,” says a voice from the doorway, and Harry turns to find Louis striding into the kitchen, looking rumpled like he just woke up. “What’s for breakfast, Lime?”

“Coco Pops,” Liam says, shoving another spoonful into his mouth.

“My favorite,” Louis says excitedly, getting himself a bowl of it.

“I’ve never had this before,” Harry says, taking another small bite of his own. “It’s so sweet.”

“That’s because it’s chocolate cereal,” Louis says, plopping down next to him. “Can’t get much sweeter than this before breakfast becomes dessert.”

“They only ever gave us porridge for breakfast at the compound,” Harry says. “I’ve never even heard of cereal.”

“I think that might be the greatest injustice I’ve heard of yet,” Louis says, shaking his head. “Well, eat up, we’ve got lots to do once everyone’s awake,” he says, waving his spoon at Harry and Liam.

Harry makes slow work of his cereal, stirring it until it’s soggy and clumpy like porridge before he eats it. Louis and Liam watch him like he’s crazy, but he just can’t imagine eating anything so crunchy and crispy in the morning, and they both forget about it once the kitchen starts filling up, anyway.

Louis gets up while everyone’s eating, sitting up on the back of the booth seat and whistling to get everyone’s attention. “Right,” he says, “I know we’re all still settling in and getting acquainted, but we’ve already wasted too much time. We need to get to work today, alright? We don’t know how much time we have before the Community retaliates, if they ever do, so once everyone is fed and dressed, let’s meet in the lounge and start talking, yeah?”

Everyone mumbles a quiet agreement, and Jesy waves her spoon to draw the attention to herself.

“We’ve cleared a room for you lot on the third floor, and we found enough beds for all of you. You’ll have to share the room, though, we don’t have enough space for you all to have private rooms,” she says.

“Oh, we’re not allowed to have private rooms, anyway,” Robert says, looking alarmed. “You all have private rooms?”

“We’re not in the Community anymore, Robert,” Harry says, voice low. “It’s not a sin here.”

Robert frowns and nods, looking appeased but still shocked by the mention of privacy.

“Private rooms are a sin?” Louis frowns, looking to Harry. “Why?”

“Not the privacy, but what the privacy allows,” Harry says, unable to look Louis directly in the eye.

“Privacy breeds curiosity,” Jade says, cheeks pinking a little once she’s said it. “And curiosity is a sin, in any form. In the Community, our bodies are not ours. Male bodies are tools, and female bodies are… vessels. Our brains are unfortunate by-products of our humanity, and we’re not supposed to exercise them the same way we exercise our bodies,” she explains.

Louis and Jesy share a horrified glance, and Harry shrinks in on himself a little.

“We’ll be fine sharing a room,” he says, to ease the tension in the air. “We’re used to it.”

They spend the next hour or so moving their few belongings out of the lounge and up the stairs to a room at the front of the building, overlooking the street. There are five beds set up which, as far as Harry can tell, are just five mattresses on the floor, spread out across the wide, empty room. There’s a bed in each corner of the room and then one more pushed up against the center of the back wall, adjacent to the windows. Robert chooses the bed closest to the door, Niall chooses the one in the back corner of the room, Jade chooses the one on the other side, under the window, and then Amelia claims the one opposite Jade, at the other end of the wall. Harry trudges to the remaining bed, the only one not pushed into a corner, and drops his things onto it, before turning back to look at Louis and the others where they’ve gathered by the doorway.

“My room is the last door on the right,” Louis says, pointing down the corridor toward the front of the building. “Perrie’s is the one next to mine. Everyone else lives on the upper part of the floor,” he says, pointing to where a set of a few steps leads up to another landing, where a faded, broken sign points one way to the toilets, and the other way to the faculty offices.

“This was a classroom,” Jade says, looking around the room. She says it knowingly, not like a question, and when Harry follows her gaze, he notices the massive blackboard above his bed, a few pieces of old, crumbling chalk still sitting on the ledge. 

There were blackboards like that at the compound, as well, but nobody ever used them. They weren’t allowed, and there was really no use for them, anyway; nobody could read or write or draw anything, and even if they could, chalk was a forbidden substance inside the compound, too.

“This is one of the bigger ones,” Louis says. “Perrie’s room and my room were classrooms, too, and the others live in the teacher’s offices. There are about ten floors all with similar layouts, classrooms like these, but we don’t use them,” he shrugs. “It’s too much work to heat and maintain more floors than you absolutely need. We do have a generator, but it’s only strong enough for the lights and the kitchen appliances, really.”

“There’s no fireplace in here,” Niall notices, frowning. “How do we heat the room?”

“This,” Louis says, gesturing to the metal drum in the center of the room, “is your fireplace. We keep wood and matches in the supply closet at the end of the corridor, but try not to be wasteful, because firewood is pretty hard to come by in the city.”

“That goes for everything in here, too,” Perrie says. “Don’t be wasteful. Don’t use anything you don’t need, always clean up after yourself, and if you need something, ask for it,” she says. “We run a tight ship around here, and we can’t afford to screw up.”

“But it’s ok to mess up sometimes, we’re all human,” Louis says, shooting Perrie a look. “Just let us know if you think something is wrong, okay?”

Harry looks at Niall, and Niall directs his confused expression back at him, eyes narrowed. Harry’s sure that none of them have any idea what Louis and Perrie are on about, but they already seem to have moved on, so Harry saves his questions and focuses back in on what Louis is saying.

“Get settled in, and we’ll meet you all down in the lounge in a bit,” he says, backing out of the room slowly. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

With that, they’re gone, and Harry turns back to Niall.

“What do you reckon that was about?” he asks, glancing over at Jade, as well. “That whole ‘screwing up’ thing seemed a lot deeper than firewood.”

“These people seem to have a lot of secrets,” Niall says. “I’m worried we’re getting ourselves into something we’re going to wish we never got involved with.”

“I don’t think so,” Harry says. “Liam explained their group and their mission to me this morning, and it seems pretty amazing,” he shrugs. “It really seems like they’re on the right side of things, here.”

“That’s what they want you to think, though,” Niall says, voice hushed. “How do you know they’re not just telling you what you want to hear so that you’ll help them?”

“Oh, come off it, Niall,” Jade says, worming her way between them and linking her arms with theirs, pulling them both toward the door. “We’ve just got to keep our guard up, keep our interests in mind, and not let them manipulate us.”

“How are you so good at this?” Harry asks, holding the door open for Robert and Amelia as they head out. 

“I don’t know,” Jade says. “I’m just trying to keep us all safe.”

Harry gives her a small smile, pecking a kiss to her cheek before they descend the stairs. Everyone is waiting in the lounge, as promised, scattered about on the sofas and chairs and some cushions on the floor.

“Right, shall we dive in?” Louis says, before they’ve all even found seats. Harry squishes himself onto the sofa beside Niall and Jade, Robert sitting up on the arm of the sofa and Amelia plopping down in front of them, at their feet. They must look a sorry bunch, Harry thinks, unwilling to be more than a few feet away from each other and completely unaware of what’s even going on.

“You first,” Jade says, settling easily back into her role as leader of the group. Harry shrinks back into the sofa cushions and watches, smiling to himself. “Teach us something, and we’ll trade.”

“Alright,” Louis says, leaning back in his chair and eyeing all of them quickly. “How about you ask us a question, we’ll answer, and then we get to ask you a question?”

“Where are we?” Jade asks immediately. “We spent our whole lives thinking there was nothing outside of the compound. Exactly how much space is there in the world, and whereabouts are we in it?”

“Oh, boy,” Louis sighs, glancing over at Leigh-Anne.

“We’re in England,” Leigh-Anne says, getting up off of her cushion on the floor and walking over to one of the bookshelves built into the wall. She searches for a moment and comes back with a massive scroll, laying it out on the floor in the center of the room so that everyone can see it.

“This is a map of the world. Everything that’s blue is water, and all of the other colors represent different countries, which make up continents. It doesn’t quite work like this anymore, because this map is from before the apocalypse, but the only thing that’s changed are the borders. We still call everything by the same names, because it still makes sense, but nothing on this map is technically accurate except for the shapes and locations of the land. We’re here,” she says, pointing to a small, pink shape in the very center of the scroll. 

“And where is the compound we came from?” Jade asks, eyes sweeping over the map like she’ll be able to see it herself.

“Uh,” Leigh-Anne says, squinting down at the pink shape again. “About here, probably,” she says, using the tip of her fingernail to point to a dot toward the top of the pink shape.

“Isn’t that where we are now?” Jade frowns.

“No,” Leigh-Anne says, finger moving a couple centimeters down the shape. “We’re here, in London.”

“Oh,” Jade breathes, eyes widening. Harry blinks, frowning at the map, feeling like he’s losing his mind. 

“We drove all that time and we only went from there to here?” he asks, horrified.

“Yup,” Leigh-Anne says. “The world is a massive, massive place.”

Harry looks at Jade quickly, and Jade looks back at him, looking absolutely stunned. He thinks his face must look very much the same; when he pictured the world outside of the compound, he pictured maybe another compound’s worth of space beyond it, maybe a little more than that. He had absolutely no idea that the compound was but a pinprick in the grand scheme of the world, and he suddenly feels tiny, like he’s hardly a speck of dust.

“That was way more than one question,” Perrie says. “Our turn.”

Louis rolls his eyes, pinching Perrie’s arm, but he doesn’t argue. “How does the Community work, in terms of law enforcement? Who makes the rules, and what happens if someone breaks them?” he asks.

Jade doesn’t say anything, still staring in disbelief at the map on the floor, so Harry clears his throat and takes over. “The Leaders are in charge. We hardly ever see them, except at weddings and other special occasions, and no one knows their names, but they wear special yellow outfits, so we know who they are. They make the rules, I guess, but we’re all in charge of enforcing them. No one ever really breaks them, because no one has any reason to, but sometimes, if someone does something really horrible, they get Denounced and removed from the Community,” he says.

“Denounced?” Louis asks quietly, hanging on Harry’s every word. “What’s that entail?”

“The whole Community gathers in the theater, and the person being Denounced stands up on a platform on the stage. The Leaders explain what they did wrong, why it was wrong, and make them apologize, and then-” Harry cuts off, thoughts occupied by the one man he saw get Denounced, the harrowing _snap_ of his neck filling Harry’s mind.

“And then the Leaders hang them from a rope in front of everyone, so we can all witness their soul leaving their body so it can be cleansed and recycled by the sun,” Niall finishes. They’re the only ones here who remember the one Denouncement that happened during their lifetime, Harry realizes; Amelia was only a baby, and Robert was too little to really know what was happening. Harry remembers every second of it, though, and he’s sure Niall and Jade do, too, though they’ve never talked about it.

“Jesus,” Louis whispers, rubbing at his face. “Okay. Your turn.”

“Is it true?” Niall asks, before anyone else can say anything, his voice loud like he’s desperate to get his question in. “Is any of it true?”

“Any of what?” Louis asks carefully, looking sad when he meets Niall’s eyes. 

“Anything they told us?” Niall says, voice strained. Harry feels a bit like crying, too, reaching around Jade to brush his fingers over Niall’s arm. “The Community, the stories, I- is any of that stuff real? About the sun, and the world, and the anarchy?”

“Well, it’ll be hard to tell until we’ve learned everything, but,” Louis shares a worried glance with Perrie, “so far, no. I can tell you that they lied about there being nothing outside of the compound, and about their mission statement being wholesome, and I can tell you that those people, the ones that got Denounced,” he shakes his head, looking upset. “Their souls didn’t go to be with the sun.”

“Where did they go, then?” Niall asks, hands trembling as much as his voice.

“I can’t really answer that,” Louis says softly. “Nobody really knows for sure. But they- they died, Niall. They were killed.”

Jade hiccups a little, and Harry’s attention snaps back to her immediately when he realizes she’s crying. He reaches for her, pulling her into his arms and holding her against his chest, letting her hide her face from the others. Harry keeps his face stony, even when Louis bows his head out of respect, even when Perrie blinks the tears out of her own eyes, gaze stuck on Jade.

“Your turn,” Harry says, forcing everything out of his head except the sound of Louis taking a breath to compose himself, and Perrie shaking out her hair.

“What did they teach you in lessons?” Perrie asks, directing the question at Harry, since he’s the only one that seems capable of answering. 

“Mostly things about the Community,” Harry shrugs. “The younger children are taught things about how babies are made and why babies are so important to Community, so that we could grow up and contribute to the population that would eventually repopulate the world, which they said was completely empty except for us,” he says. “As we got older, they taught us more about history, about why the sun had to kill the earth and how it happened.”

“Which is?” Perrie presses, intrigued.

“Which is that the world became so overcome with greed and evil and stupidity that the sun could no longer stand to shine down upon it, and it sent waves of fires and storms and plagues that wiped the whole world clean so we could start over again,” Harry explains.

Louis chokes a little, and Leigh-Anne stands up again, hands over her face. “I’m gonna be sick,” she mutters, walking over to the windows and cranking one open to get some fresh air. Everyone else looks equally as horrified, but Harry doesn’t quite know why, and neither does Jade, apparently, when she finally sniffles one last time and picks her head up.

“Is that not true either?” Niall asks sharply, sounding drained of emotion, like he’s so deeply, incredibly overwhelmed he doesn’t even know how to process it.

“No, it’s not,” Louis says, horrified. “That’s- oh, Jesus-”

“I fucking knew it,” Perrie bites, turning to Louis. “I knew it! I’ve been saying all along that they were the ones who fucking started-”

“Perrie,” Louis says sharply, cutting her off. “Just- wait. Just wait.”

“What’s going on?” Harry asks, sitting up a little. He looks towards the others, finding Liam staring at the floor like he can’t believe his ears, Steve scribbling frantically in a notebook, and Jesy getting up to shuffle over and check on Leigh-Anne.

“The sun didn’t cause the apocalypse,” Louis says, voice low and even. “The Leaders of the Community did.”


	8. Chapter 8

_Washington DC, USA, 2991_

“Everything is set, Mr. President,” the secretary says, voice quiet. “The military is awaiting your signal.”

“And the allies?” the President says, finger hovering over the button to send the signal to the troops scattered worldwide, ready to shut every inch of it down.

“All accounted for and in position,” the secretary says. “Mr. President-”

“That’ll be all,” the President says, turning away and glancing out the window, watching the street lights flicker on the damp pavement for just a moment longer. The secretary makes a quiet noise in the back of her throat and then leaves the room, and the President counts one more minute before he holds down the button under his thumb.

“Go,” he says into the phone, knowing his voice is echoing across the world, and now the soldiers are following his orders, setting off the pulses-

The street goes dark.

-

_Leeds, UK, 2992_

It’s been a year, and the world is quiet. North America did not take kindly to the electromagnetic pulses, nor did Europe, or anyone, really. The only people that went quietly and without a fight were the smaller countries that took nukes in the time it took for the rest of the world to come to, and by then, half the world’s population had already been wiped out, and the other half was starting to come to their senses.

A day. It took one day and several dozen nuclear bombs, and half the people in the entire world were dead. It only took a week after that for the civil wars to start breaking out, conservatives and liberals going at it in the streets amidst absolute radio silence from all the world leaders, from all the world, in general.

As planned, the EMPs were strong enough to not only disable, but completely destroy the power grid in North and South America, and most of Europe, as well. It was all done without communication, of course, since everything powered by electricity had been bricked by the EMPs. It was strategic, meticulous, and perfectly executed, and as the first year stretched on, the entire world went to shit, right on schedule.

The first wave of casualties came alarmingly quick. A lot of them were already sick, and without access to the medical care they needed, they died in no time at all. Others died from their own lack of preparedness to survive in a world without electricity; spoiled food, lack of medication for chronic illnesses, starvation once the supermarkets ran empty. People burned their houses to the ground in an effort to cook food that had already spoiled, others got themselves killed trying to repair vehicles that were beyond any kind of help. There were rampant suicides, people who couldn’t bear to deal with the world in this state, people who were so disheartened by the things they’d already lost, they couldn’t go on.

The rest happened slowly, when the epidemics started spreading. The sanitation problems caused by the lack of electricity and access to clean facilities brought about illnesses the world hadn’t seen or heard of in millenia, and had no way of dealing with. By the end of that first year, less than a quarter of the world’s population was still alive, and half of them were still in the process of dying.

It’s quieted down by now, at least from where the President is sitting, in a small apartment in an abandoned university campus somewhere in northern England. Building the protective walls is slow-going with the lack of electricity, but they’re working on it, and the engineer says the generator will be up and running within a few weeks. 

The British Prime Minister is in a similar apartment a floor above, and the French President is on the floor down, several of their other allies, other powerful world leaders, scattered about throughout the rest of the building. They’ll meet for dinner in a few hours, decide where to go from here, and figure out how exactly they’ll begin building the New Community.

The goal, of course, is to start over, to wipe the Earth clean of all it’s filth and begin the new millennium on a fresh canvas. The Community’s goal will be to gather as many ideal genes as possible and reproduce rapidly, until the world can be repopulated by a perfect, designer race of people. It won’t be easy, but with the draining pool of idiots left in the world killing themselves off like clockwork, it won’t take very long, and the perfect world could be just around the corner. All they need is a story convincing enough to get people to cooperate, and a complete purge of any materials, written or otherwise, that might tell them differently.

-

_London, UK, 3011_

Harry swallows hard, grip tightening where his hand is resting on Jade’s shoulder. Jade is stunned into silence again, but she’s not crying this time, just staring down at the map and shaking with quiet rage.

“The Leaders really did all that?” Robert asks, voice so low they probably wouldn’t even be able to hear him if the room wasn’t so chillingly, terribly quiet.

“It’s just a theory,” Louis says, almost as quietly. “But it’s a likely one.”

“That can’t be true,” Niall says. “They told us the Community was over a hundred years old. That’s- then-”

“Wait,” Leigh-Anne says, finally moving from her place by the windows and running back to the bookshelves. She rifles through some of the books, muttering quietly to herself, until she finds the one she’s looking for, flipping quickly through the pages as she makes her way back to the couch. “There,” she says, holding the book open in front of Niall. It’s a full page image of a man, Harry can’t quite see his face from this angle, but Niall’s face goes pale. “Do you recognize him?” Leigh-Anne urges, letting Niall take the book from her.

“Yes,” Niall breathes, staring in amazement at the photo. “He’s one of the Leaders.”

Leigh-Anne huffs, turning back to her group. “That’s the Prime Minister,” she says, pointing angrily at the book in Niall’s lap. “We were fucking right.”

Niall slams the book shut, pushing it onto the floor and drawing his knees up to his chest. When he looks over at Harry, he’s got tears shining in his eyes, but Harry doesn’t know how to help him, doesn’t know anything, at this point, least of all what the hell comes next.


	9. Chapter 9

Harry’s never been a stranger to sleepless nights, but more often now than ever he finds himself tossing and turning in his small, lumpy bed, knocking his limbs off the wall where the mattress is pushed up against it. 

He’s beginning to feel a bit like he’s back in the compound. He hasn’t left this building since he entered it, nearly a week ago, now, and he’s itching for some fresh air on his skin, even though it’s still the dead of winter. The new year started two days ago, and they all celebrated with some bad wine that Perrie found in an abandoned shop somewhere, but it’s been quiet in here ever since.

They’ve kept up with their lessons, for the most part, trading smaller details back and forth now that they’ve figured out most of the big stuff. It’s a lot to take in, but Harry’s having the most trouble wrapping his brain around the fact that the Community was only formed a few months before he was born, and not a century ago, like they were told. He can’t stop thinking about the adults, the ones who were already alive when the Community came to be, the ones who were born into freedom and ended up slaves to the Community. He wonders if any of them went voluntarily, or if any of them even knew what they were getting themselves into. He isn’t sure which is more painful to hope for; that they willingly signed up for the Community’s horrible mission, or that they were forced into it because they fit the profile of the perfect race the Leaders wanted to create.

Now that most of the secrets are out in the open, Louis and the others have been teaching them how to read and write, which is slow going and infinitely more frustrating than Harry anticipated it would be. It turns out that Jade is a really great artist, now that she’s gotten the chance to try it, and she’s been working for days on a mural on the chalkboard in their room. It’s lovely, swirling, arching lines and abstract shapes that cover the entire space above Harry’s bed, and though there’s chalk dust absolutely everywhere and it sends Niall into sneezing fits every five minutes when they’re all trying to sleep, Jade has found her passion, and Harry’s thrilled for her.

Harry himself, however, is finding this new world a bit hard to settle into. He wants to, he desperately wants to make himself at home here and find his own passion, but everything is so overwhelming. He spends every free minute he gets trying to practice reading, but it’s a hard skill to learn on one’s own, and he hates having to bother everyone to help him. It doesn’t dull his determination, though, especially on nights like these, when he can’t resist sneaking out of bed and down to the lounge to have a look at the bookshelves again.

There’s one book in particular that he’s dedicated himself to finishing, so that’s the one he picks up tonight, bringing it over to the sofa and curling up with it. He pulls the chain on the lamp beside the sofa and settles in, opening up to the page where he left off and chewing on his lip as he traces the shapes of the letters with his eyes.

There’s something about this book, something about the way it looks, the way it feels in his hands, that makes Harry feel like it’s special, like he has to finish it. There’s nothing on the cover, and the title has long rubbed off the spine, but Louis called it fiction, a made up story that was meant to entertain but also to teach the reader something about the world, and Harry loves the promise of that more than anything.

He gets through half a page very, very slowly before he hears soft footsteps coming down the stairs, and he peeks up over the top of the book to see who it is. He watches the person pass the doorway to the lounge and then back up slowly, peering in to see him, too.

“Harry?” Louis says, shuffling into the lounge and letting the door fall shut so they won’t wake anyone else. “What are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Harry says, focusing back on the book. “I wish I could read.”

“You can read,” Louis says, smiling, walking over to see how far Harry’s gotten in the book. “I was just going to get some water, want some?”

“Please,” Harry says, already working on tracing out another word. He only makes it through another sentence before Louis comes back, handing him a cup of water and plopping down next to him. 

“How’s it going?” Louis asks, nodding to the book. “Getting any easier?”

“Not really,” Harry sighs. “I know all the letters, but I still have trouble figuring out what the words mean.”

“Read to me, and I’ll help you when you get stuck,” Louis says, settling into the sofa, his side pressed to Harry’s side. 

“I don’t want to keep you up,” Harry frowns, looking over at him.

“Couldn’t sleep, anyway,” Louis shrugs. 

“Alright,” Harry says, holding the book up to his face again. “Where should I start?”

“Wherever you want,” Louis says, putting his head down on Harry’s shoulder so he can see the book, as well. 

Harry nods, resisting the urge to shrug Louis away from him. There’s something odd about the feeling of Louis being so close to him, but he can’t tell if it’s odd in a good way or a bad way, so he just ignores it, starting over from the beginning of the page.

“Th- the way I f-,” Harry frowns, looking quickly at Louis for help.

“Figure,” Louis fills in the word. “Remember what we talked about, just sound it out.”

“Figure,” Harry repeats quietly, memorizing the shape of the word. “The way I figure it, e- ev-,” he frowns again at the next long string of letters, all of them blurring together in his mind.

“Sound it out,” Louis says. “Just go slow.”

“Ev-eh-ry-one,” Harry reads, pausing after each syllable. “Everyone?”

“Good,” Louis grins, squeezing his arm gently.

Harry smiles, taking a moment to regain his focus on the page. “Everyone… gets a… um,” he pauses to sound it out in his mind, and Louis gives him all the time he needs. “Miracle?” he says unsurely, looking over at Louis. “What’s that?”

“Something unexpected, but good,” Louis says, shifting to look up at Harry’s eyes. Their faces are so close together, and from this angle, Louis’s eyes are the most unique shade of blue Harry’s ever seen. “Like, a gift from God, or something.”

“God?” Harry asks.

“That’s absolutely a topic for another time,” Louis laughs, nuzzling against Harry’s shoulder sleepily. “Keep going.”

“You’re about to fall asleep on me,” Harry says, watching Louis’s eyes flutter closed and then open again.

“No,” Louis argues, but his eyes are already drooping again, so Harry smiles to himself and closes the book.

“C’mon, I should probably sleep, too,” Harry says, nudging Louis away an inch and sitting up a little. Somehow it brings them even closer than before, though, and when Harry turns to look at him, Louis’s face is an inch away from his own, and his big blue eyes are already locked on Harry’s.

It makes Harry’s stomach do something funny, the way Louis looks this close, all soft and sleepy and so warm against Harry’s side. It makes his chest feel all tight and his cheeks hot, and his only available reaction is to lean away from it so violently that Louis almost falls off the sofa.

“Oh,” Louis says, his face going scarlet immediately. “Right, um. Goodnight,” he says, grabbing his cup of water and setting off quickly for the stairs. 

Harry sits a moment longer, dissecting the last few minutes in his head. He and Louis aren’t very close, but he thinks they could be, maybe, once they get to know each other. Louis seems to favor Harry over the others in Harry’s group, and Harry hasn’t a single clue why, but he likes it. He likes being the one Louis sits down next to at mealtimes, the one Louis looks to first when he asks the group a question, the one Louis directs his jokes at as if the only laugh he cares about getting is Harry’s. There’s something about Louis’s attention that is exciting and intriguing and so, so appealing to Harry, but it’s also scary, especially in moments like these.

He gets up eventually and puts his book away, switching the lamp off and trudging back up the stairs to bed, but he still tosses and turns for a few more hours before he’s able to fall asleep. He can’t get Louis’s face out of his mind, the sparkle in his eyes, the heat of his breath against Harry’s face, the way he smelled warm and cuddly like he’d been tucked up in bed for hours. Harry doesn’t know what this feeling is, or why exactly he’s feeling it, but it’s terrifying, and he intends to ignore and avoid it for as long as he possibly can.


	10. Chapter 10

When Harry gets down to the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, he finds Jade, Perrie and Louis already sitting around the table, eating and laughing about something. It’s jarring to see Jade laughing and being open with anyone that isn’t Harry himself or Niall; she’s slow to warm, easy to spook, and she’s never taken very kindly to anyone she didn’t already know inside and out, even within the Community.

“Harry!” Jade calls, reaching out for him with the hand that isn’t occupied by a piece of jam toast. “Good morning!”

“Morning,” Harry says, smiling when the other two turn around to look at him. Perrie’s face falls a little, but Louis’s lights up, and Jade just keeps reaching for him until he sits down in the empty seat beside her.

“Hi,” Jade says, pressing into his side and nuzzling against him. She’s very cuddly by nature, but then again, they all are; they grew up without boundaries, practically on top of each other from the day they were born, it’s not unusual for them to reach for each other without even realizing what they’re doing.

Harry wraps his arm around Jade’s shoulders, stealing a bite of toast right out of her hand. Perrie makes an odd, low sound in her throat, and Louis just blinks, still smiling a little.

“How’d you sleep?” Louis asks, catching Harry’s eye. He’s got a glimmer of mischief behind his smile, and it makes Harry blush for some reason he can’t quite put his finger on. It’s not like they were doing anything mischievous, anyway, they were only reading.

“Not bad,” Harry says, glancing at Perrie when he feels her eyes boring into his skull. “Uh. You?”

“Good,” Louis says cheerfully, seemingly unaware of the sudden tension. “Would you like some toast?”

“I’d love some,” Harry says, loosening his grip on Jade a bit but letting her remain where she is, leaning most of her weight on his shoulder while she nibbles her toast.

“So,” Perrie says, once Louis has gotten up to get Harry a piece of toast, “you two are quite close?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, glancing down at Jade. She just smiles up at him, pecking a wet, sticky kiss to his cheek.

“I thought you were meant to marry the other one?” Perrie says, jaw set. Harry cannot figure her out, cannot read anything about her expression past the fact that she’s annoyed, and Harry has no idea why.

“Oh,” Jade says, face falling a little. “Well, yeah, I was. Niall and I were the closest male and female in age, so,” she shrugs, stuffing another bite of her toast in her mouth.

“But you two…?” Perrie asks, pointing between Harry and Jade suspiciously.

“Oh!” Jade gasps, sitting up quickly. “No-”

“What?” Harry frowns, utterly confused. “Wh-”

“Oh,” Perrie says, looking genuinely surprised. “So you’re-”

“He’s- he’s like my brother,” Jade says, laughing awkwardly, frantically. “It’s like if you were to marry Louis. Just- yuck.”

“Yuck,” Harry agrees, but he still has no idea what’s going on, other than that both Perrie and Jade are now blushing beet red. 

“Yuck,” Perrie says, nodding quickly. “God, I- I’m sorry.”

“We’re just close,” Jade says, glancing over at Harry. “Same with Niall, and Robert and Amelia, too. They’re all like, I don’t know, they’re my brothers and sister,” she shrugs.

“But you were going to marry Niall,” Perrie frowns. 

“Doesn’t mean I wanted to,” Jade mutters, looking down.

“You didn’t want to marry Niall?” Harry says, bewildered. “Jade?”

“I was going to!” Jade says, face still as red as the jam on her toast. “I would never have dreamt of trying to get out of it! It’s just- I don’t know. You didn’t want to marry Ava!”

“But Ava was-” Harry shakes his head, “I didn’t even know her. You and Niall were-”

“Best friends,” Jade cuts him off. “Just like me and you. We were going to do what we had to do because we had to do it, not because either of us wanted to.”

“He didn’t want to, either?” Harry asks, feeling the entire world shifting beneath him. He never considered that possibility, never thought about the situation from outside of his own perspective.

“Well I- I don’t know,” Jade says quietly. “We never discussed it. It was just, like, a thing. A thing that was going to happen, no matter what, and it was fine, but, like,” she shrugs again, looking down.

Harry doesn’t say anything, too shocked to even react. He knew, subconsciously, that Jade and Niall didn’t love each other like that, enough to want to get married, but he never considered how hard it would be to have to look at your best friend like that. It was hard enough picturing himself with Ava, who he didn’t know a single bit, but now that he’s imagining it, he thinks he’d pick that over having to marry someone he loved so platonically, like Niall and Jade.

“Order up, one piece of toast for- oh no, what happened?” Louis asks, when he arrives back to the tense dining table.

“I asked if they were fucking and somehow ruined both of their lives by accident,” Perrie says, rubbing at her face. 

“Oh, dear,” Louis says, taking his seat again carefully.

Harry picks up his toast and just about shoves it down his throat, silently pleading for something, anything, to break the horrible silence.

The reprieve comes in the shape of Niall who, at the current moment, is the last person both Jade and Harry want to see. He walks in silently, goes straight behind the counter to the kitchen, and doesn’t say a word to anyone. Harry glances over at Jade, and Jade just hides her face in her hands, because they both know that there’s a very good chance that Niall just heard every word they said. Perrie looks mortified, but she also can’t take her eyes off of Jade, which Harry thinks is very, very interesting.

“Morning, everyone,” Niall says, finding a seat at the table and tucking into his toast like nothing in the world is wrong. It eases the mood just a bit, just enough to put some air back in Harry’s lungs, and Jade immediately shifts to cuddle into Niall’s side, as if to prove a point to the universe as a whole.

-

Harry escapes the kitchen before everyone has even come down for breakfast, and he heads straight for the lounge to find his book right where he left it last night. He can hear people moving about outside the lounge, can hear the voices and laughter and conversation echoing from the kitchen two stories down, but he doesn’t pay them any mind, and no one comes to bother him.

He gets about half an hour of peace and alone time with his book before the lounge door creaks open, and he half expects it to be Louis again, half hopes that it is, but instead he finds Niall shuffling in and straight over to the sofa.

“Hey,” Niall says, nudging Harry with his knee. “Budge over.”

Harry sits up a little, allowing Niall enough room to flop down on the sofa beside him, though he still ends up mostly on top of him.

“Oi,” Harry grunts, putting his book down at the other end of the sofa.

“Sorry,” Niall mutters, but he shifts so that he’s even more on top of Harry, digging his face into his neck.

“Alright, Ni?” Harry asks, finally submitting and wrapping his arms around Niall’s back, letting him cuddle in properly. 

“Yeah,” Niall says, voice muffled in Harry’s shoulder. “No. I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?” Harry asks, hoping to anyone that this isn’t because he overheard the conversation in the kitchen earlier.

“I don’t know,” Niall says again, quieter this time. “Is it weird that I’m, like, homesick?”

“A little, to be honest,” Harry says. “But I get it. I am too, in a way. It’s overwhelming.”

“Like, I know how horrible things were there,” Niall says, “but I miss, like, knowing things. Or at least thinking I knew things.”

“Security,” Harry agrees. “It was safe. We were safe, and we knew what was going on around us at all times.”

“Yeah,” Niall breathes. “I miss that.”

“But think about everything we know now,” Harry says. “Think about what they did.”

“Yeah,” Niall says again. “I know. I don’t want to go back, obviously. I just-”

“Don’t say you wish we never came here,” Harry says, pulling back to look at Niall’s face.

“I wasn’t going to,” Niall frowns. “No, I’m happy we left. I just, I don’t know, I don’t like this very much, either.”

Harry nods once, doesn’t say anything, just pulls Niall back against his chest and lets him cuddle in again. He knows what Niall means, in a way, but he’s not really sure he agrees; this place is everything he’s ever wanted to find, everything he’s ever wondered about, a whole world full of knowledge and opportunity right in front of him. He’s been curious his whole life, and he just found out that that’s okay, that it’s good for the entire world that he was, and nothing that could happen from here on out would make him change his mind about that.

A few minutes go by before he hears voices approaching the lounge, and he looks up to find Louis, Perrie, and Jade in the doorway. Harry watches the realization settle over Jade’s face when she sees him and Niall, watches her heart break through her eyes, sees how hard she swallows before she turns away and disappears up the stairs. Perrie goes after her, but Louis just stays in the doorway with a small, sad smile on his face.

Harry shakes his head, and Louis nods, turning away and following the girls up the stairs. No one bothers them for the rest of the morning, and Niall eventually pulls himself back together, and they go on from there like nothing happened at all.

It’s a bridge they’re going to have to cross at some point, probably soon, but Harry’s happy to keep circling around and around and avoiding it for as long as possible. There’s a lot of things he’s happy to avoid at the moment, though, which probably isn’t going to turn out very well for him in the end. One of those things stares him down for the entirety of dinner, and then for a bit even after, until it’s late enough that everyone else has gone to sleep, and they’re the only two left in the lounge.

“Did you wanna practice reading?” Louis asks, a twinge of hope in his voice as he grabs Harry’s book from the shelf, shuffling over to the sofa.

He should say no, should go upstairs and lay down and finally get a good night’s sleep, and then deal with all of the things he’s going to have to deal with sooner or later. His eyes are burning, and he feels like he could sleep for a week the second his head hits his pillow.

“Yeah,” he says, reaching for the book, and Louis settles down beside him like the night before, head on his chest instead of his shoulder this time, and thus goes the rest of the night.


	11. Chapter 11

As time goes on, Harry forgets almost entirely what it was like to be in the Community. He can’t imagine being anywhere except where he is now, can’t imagine his life without the support and trust he’s found in this new group, and his childhood feels almost like a bad dream at this point. With Louis’s help, he’s finally able to read almost entire sentences without getting confused, and he’s able to actually figure out the words on his own instead of just guessing what might come next. 

Everyone else has settled in pretty well, too, found their places in the group and made a home of them. Jade, for one, has found a very good friend in Perrie; they can be found together at any given time, usually off in some corner or in a different room by themselves, giggling at each other and talking quietly. Jade has never been friends with another girl before, she’s only ever been close with Harry and Niall, so Harry figures it’s nice for her to finally be able to connect with someone who relates to her like that. Robert has found his place with Liam and Steve, building things and fixing things and learning how math works and how he can use it to be helpful. Amelia’s been spending a lot of time with Leigh-Anne, finding something of a mentor in her. They’re very similar, the two of them; they’re both very animated, social, interested in the way the world works. Leigh-Anne’s thrilled to have found a shadow, and Amelia’s more than happy to follow her around and learn from her, so they end up working pretty well together.

The only person who, at the end of their first month outside of the Community, still doesn’t seem to be finding a rhythm in the group is Niall. He spends a lot of time watching everyone else from the outside, trying and usually failing to insert himself into whatever everyone else is up to. He’s having a bit of trouble figuring out his interests, now that he’s allowed to have them, but he’s quiet about it, seemingly content to just linger in the background until someone remembers that he’s there. Harry’s tried to get him to spend time with him and Louis, but he just gets stiff and awkward whenever Harry and Louis interact, which makes it uncomfortable for everyone. Harry thinks maybe he’s jealous, or something, because he and Niall have been inseparable since the day Harry was born, and now Harry and Louis are thick as thieves and Niall feels abandoned. He wants to ask about it, but he doesn’t know how to bring it up, doesn’t want to hurt Niall more than he’s already hurt.

It’s nearly the end of January now, and Harry’s birthday is rapidly approaching. He’ll be 18, which he supposes doesn’t mean much now that he’s out of the Community, but it’s exciting nonetheless. He’ll finally be an adult, like everyone else in the group, save for Robert and Amelia. Maybe he’s just excited to technically not be a child anymore, to feel at least a little more important, a little more distinguished, a little more grown up.

Or maybe he’s just excited to have one more thing to bring him closer to Louis, who has very quickly become the most exciting and intriguing thing in his life. Louis is 20 which, at least to Harry, is a real adult age, and maybe when Harry’s 18, Louis will think of him as an equal, stop doting on him so much. Not that Harry minds the doting, not at all; for whatever reason, any and every bit of attention that Louis gives him makes him feel like he’s glowing, and he isn’t really sure he cares what form it’s coming to him in, so long as he keeps getting it.

It’s another late night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep, but Harry and Louis are still awake in the lounge, Harry leaning back against Louis’s chest on the sofa while he reads out loud. He could probably survive with less of these lessons now that he’s gotten the hang of reading, but he likes it too much, likes being this close to Louis and having his sole attention for a few hours every night.

“I feel someone pull hard on my shirt,” Harry reads, voice quiet and sleepy. He’s praying Louis won’t tell him to stop and go to bed, but usually Louis is just as reluctant to call it quits as he is, so he thinks he’s safe. “I spin my head and see Ben, his eyes shooting back and forth b-between me and a… corner of the room.”

He pauses when Louis shifts behind him, sliding a little lower on the sofa and hooking his chin over Harry’s shoulder. It makes Harry’s skin prickle, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, but he’s not sure that he finds it unpleasant. 

“I have to look past a wide beam of b- bright white l- light shining down from the c- ceiling,” he continues reading, “but I can see into that corner. Two long panes of chest-high, dirty, gray tinted p- pl-,” he cuts off, frowning.

“Plexiglass,” Louis mumbles. “It’s a kind of glass, kind of like plastic glass,” he explains.

“Oh,” Harry says. “Two long panes of chest-high, dirty, gray-tinted Plexiglass lean against each other at an a- acute angel-”

“Angle,” Louis giggles. “Not angel.”

“Angle,” Harry corrects himself, blushing. “An acute angle, held up on the other side by the wooden wall.”

“You’re doing really well,” Louis says, yawning against his ear.

“Gross,” Harry says, shrugging him away a little. “Your breath smells like feet.”

“Oi,” Louis says, wrapping his arms around Harry’s middle like a backwards hug. “Actually, you’re probably right. We should probably head to bed, huh?”

“But we’re just getting to the exciting part!” Harry whines, pressing back into Louis’s chest. 

“Well, then, we’ll have something to look forward to tomorrow, won’t we?” Louis says, squeezing him tight before pushing him up and away, so he can sit up as well.

“You’re the worst,” Harry grumbles, marking his page and getting up to put the book away. 

“C’mon, love,” Louis hums, turning the lamp off and beckoning Harry to the door with a gentle wave of his hand. “You need to go to sleep, you’ve been up late reading every night this week.”

“You’ve been up late too,” Harry says, but the sleepy quality of Louis’s voice makes Harry yawn, and Louis just smirks at him and pats his cheek gently before leading the way up the stairs.

They don’t say anything when they part to go to their separate rooms, mostly because they don’t want to wake anyone else. Harry gets cold pretty easily, but he definitely always feels the coldest after he’s parted ways with Louis for the night and he has to get into his empty bed and try to fall asleep with the ghost of Louis’s body heat against his back. It’s probably a weird way to feel about his friend, but it’s true; he can’t stop himself from shivering even as he curls up under his blankets, looking over at Jade’s corner of the room to see if she’s still up, too.

Her bed is empty, which isn’t unusual. She spends a lot of time in Perrie’s room, especially at night, since Louis and Harry are always occupying the lounge. Harry hasn’t a clue what they get up to in there, but he figures it’s just girl things, and he knows better than to ask.

He turns over, looking toward Niall’s corner of the room, finding his bed empty, as well. That’s a bit rarer of a sight, because if there’s anything in the world that Niall loves, it’s sleeping, and he takes bedtime very seriously. Harry doesn’t think anything of his empty, rumpled sheets, though, figuring he’s just gone to use the toilet, and turns onto his stomach, burying his face into his pillow and closing his eyes. It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep, probably because it’s already close to sunrise and he only slept a few hours last night, as well, and the fire burning in the metal drum in the center of the room is almost enough to keep him warm throughout the night. 

-

He’s only been asleep a few hours when he’s shaken violently awake, Jade’s sharp nails digging holes into his shoulder.

“Harry!” she’s sobbing, all but dragging him out of bed and onto the floor. “Get up! He’s gone!”

“What?” Harry mutters, sitting up quickly. “What’s going on?”

“He’s gone!” Jade shrieks, looking absolutely wild. Her hair’s a mess, she’s got tear tracks down her face and she’s still pulling and tugging at him, trying to get him to his feet.

“Who’s gone?” Harry asks, standing up just so that Jade might stop trying to pull his limbs off of his body.

“Niall!” Jade shouts, pointing aggressively toward Niall’s bed, which is still empty and in exactly the same disarray as it was last night. “He’s _gone_!”

“What?” Harry asks again, blinking at Niall’s bed. “Where’d he go?”

“Does it look like I know?” Jade screams, sobbing again. “Harry-”

“Hey, shh,” Harry soothes, tugging Jade into his arms. “Calm down, love.”

“Don’t call me love!” Jade bites out, pushing Harry away. “Can’t you see something is wrong?”

“Yeah, I can see,” Harry says, looking back over at Niall’s bed. “How long has he been gone?”

“I don’t know,” Jade says, voice quieter now, a few more tears slipping down her cheeks. “Everyone’s down in the kitchen for breakfast except you two, I came to get you up and I can’t find him,” she says, wiping harshly at her face.

Harry doesn’t say anything for a moment, staring at Niall’s bed while his heart sinks down to his toes. “He’s been so quiet lately, Jade,” he says, forcing himself to meet her eyes again. “What if-”

“He wouldn’t run away,” Jade says immediately. “He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Jade,” Harry says, grabbing her hand and squeezing gently.

“No,” Jade crumples, sobbing into Harry’s chest. “It’s all my fault.”

“What?” Harry says, hugging her tight. “How in the world is this your fault?”

“Yesterday, he-” Jade sobs again, her entire body trembling in Harry’s arms. Harry rubs her back, and she calms herself down a bit before she pulls away and starts talking to her feet. “Yesterday, he walked in on me and Perrie.”

Harry blinks, waiting for her to go on, but she doesn’t. “And?” he says, confused.

“And,” Jade crosses her arms over her chest, looking everywhere but at Harry’s eyes. “We were… kissing.”

Harry barely manages to keep his jaw from hitting the ground, shocked beyond belief. He doesn’t know why, but the realization of what Jade and Perrie have been getting up to behind closed doors for all this time just absolutely floors him, and he doesn’t know what to say.

“I knew he was upset, but I was too embarrassed to talk to him, and now he’s gone,” Jade says, starting to cry again. “This is all my fault.”

“Wh-” Harry blinks again, shaking his head. “Why were you kissing Perrie?”

Jade looks up at him, startled, and punches him in the arm, quite hard. “Can that not be the thing we’re focusing on right now?” she says, and finally Harry shakes himself out of it.

“Sorry,” Harry says, grabbing the hoodie Louis gave him weeks ago from where it’s crumpled on the floor and pulling it on. “Okay, we have to go tell the others.”

“Oh, no,” Jade breathes, allowing Harry to take her hand and pull her all the way down to the kitchen. “Oh, no, no, no.”

They make a rather dramatic entrance, finding everyone gathered around the table, looking startled. Jade whimpers and Harry swallows hard, resisting the urge to break down, too.

“Niall is missing,” Harry announces, blood running cold once he’s said it out loud. “Has anyone seen him?”

“Not since last night,” Perrie says, blushing a little once she’s said it. 

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him or Robert since yesterday,” Liam says.

“Robert!” Jade says, fisting her hands in her hair. “I fucking forgot about Robert!”

“Woah, wait,” Louis says, standing up quickly. “They’re both gone?”

“Seems that way,” Harry says, a little frantic.

“Did they run away?” Louis asks, “or is this an emergency?”

“Well, it’s a bloody emergency either way, innit?” Jade snaps.

“I mean, if they ran away, there’s not much we can do to stop them,” Louis says. “They have free will, we’re not holding them captive. But if they were taken, or something-”

“We need to find them,” Jade says through gritted teeth, pushing past Harry and grabbing Louis by his shirt collar. “We _need to find them_ ,” she says again, right in Louis’s face.

“Right,” Louis says, eyes wide. “Okay, we’ll find them. Liam?”

“I’ll get the truck,” Liam says, jumping up from the table and darting out of the kitchen. Jade releases Louis, turning back to Harry and burying herself into his chest.

“We should split up,” Louis says. “Perrie, Jesy, Steve, look around the city. They might still be close, might have gotten lost somewhere. Jade, Leigh-Anne, Amelia, Harry, you stay here, in case they come back. Liam and I will head north, back toward the Community compound, see if we can find any trace of them going that way,” he says.

“No, I’m coming,” Harry says, letting go of Jade. “I’m coming with you.”

“Harry,” Louis says, looking unsure.

“He’s my best friend,” Harry says, tears starting in his eyes. Louis looks like he’s going to say something else, but Harry cuts him off. “He’s my best friend, Louis, since the day I was born. I’m coming with you.”

“Fuck,” Louis breathes. “Alright. Get a move on, everyone, the longer they’re gone the more trouble they’re in.”

With that, Louis sets off up the stairs to the lobby, and Harry presses a quick kiss to the top of Jade’s head before he hurries after him, catching up as Louis pushes through the turnstiles at the top of the landing in the lobby.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come,” Louis says, staring straight ahead instead of looking at Harry at all. 

“Why?” Harry asks, watching Louis’s profile even as they push through the doors and out onto the pavement.

“Because I think we’re probably going to be the ones to find them,” Louis says, “and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”


	12. Chapter 12

They start heading north immediately, back toward the Community compound. It’s the quietest atmosphere Harry thinks he’s ever been in, sandwiched between Liam and Louis in the cab of the truck, all three of them staring ahead through the windshield without a word spoken between them.

The drive is quite scenic. it’s the first time Harry’s seen it in daylight, and it’s lovely; massive, sprawling hills and decrepit farms that were probably once dotted with animals grazing in the long, yellow grass. Harry aches to be able to see the world before it died, back when it was overflowing with life, with color, with books to read and art to look at and people, people everywhere. It kills him to think that once, not very long ago, the very road they’re driving on was travelled by so many people, all going somewhere at once, and now it’s just empty, and they haven’t passed a single car the entire drive.

They’re a full two hours outside of London by the time anybody speaks, and it’s Louis who breaks the silence, sitting forward in his seat and squinting out the windshield at something in the distance.

“What the hell,” he mutters, mostly under his breath. “Is that a person? Liam, slow down.”

“Robert!” Harry says, grabbing Louis’s arm as they approach the person limping toward them on the road. “It’s Robert!”

Liam screeches to a stop on the side of the road and Louis jumps out of the car, running to Robert and supporting some of his weight to help him back to the truck. Harry jumps into the back and helps lift Robert in that way, and Louis climbs in after him.

“I hurt my ankle,” Robert says. “I tripped off the road, twisted it.”

“I need you to back up about 12 hours in this story,” Louis says. “What the hell happened?”

“Do you have water?” Robert asks, accepting the bottle Liam tosses from the front seat with a grateful grunt. “They’re taking him to the compound.”

Harry makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat, and Liam floors the gas, and they’re back on their journey at double speed.

“I never saw them before,” Robert says. “On my way upstairs after dinner I saw Niall heading out to the lobby, so I followed him out of curiosity, and he went right out the front door. It looked like he was just going for a walk, so I figured I’d catch up with him and ask if he was alright, if he wanted to talk about it.”

“So he did run away,” Louis says, meeting Harry’s eyes with a sad expression.

“No,” Robert says quickly. “No, he didn’t run away. Not even close.”

“Someone took him?” Harry asks quickly, resisting the urge to slap Robert across the face and demand he just tell his damn story.

“I tried to catch up to him, but I didn’t want to startle him, so I was walking slow, and he turned the corner and by the time I caught up they were hauling him into some kind of car, like this but with no windows,” he says. “I tried to run but they saw me and they grabbed me too, and they threatened to hit us if we tried to escape,” he says.

“Who?” Louis says. “Who were they?”

“Leaders,” Robert says, mostly to Harry. “I didn’t recognize them, but they were wearing the yellow outfits.”

“How did you get out?” Louis asks. 

“They threw me out once the sun came up,” Robert says. 

“Why would they do that?” Louis asks. “Why would they take him and not you?”

Robert gets a funny look on his face, and Harry’s heart sinks, eyes growing wet.

“Because they can’t Denounce children,” Harry says. “They can’t bring Robert back into the Community, because he’ll spread the word of the heathens, but they can’t kill him, because it’s against the law,” he says, voice deathly quiet.

“But Niall?” Louis asks, looking like he already knows the answer.

“But Niall they can make an example of,” Harry says, drawing his knees up to his chest and hiding his face.

“Liam, how far out are we?” Louis asks, one hand setting on Harry’s knee as if to comfort him. Right now, though, comfort is something that other people feel, and Harry can’t think of anything except how scared he is, how heartbroken he’ll be if they’re too late. If Niall dies, shit, Harry doesn’t think he can go on, doesn’t think he can even bear to go on knowing that it happened right under his nose.

“About an hour,” Liam says. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

“Well, go faster,” Louis says. “We can’t afford to be too late.”

Harry does everything in his power for the next 45 minutes to keep from crying, and then they finally skid to a stop outside a thick patch of trees, and Harry can see the walls of the compound looming over them.

“C’mon,” Louis says. “Robert, stay here, lock the doors, and hide. You’ve got a hurt ankle, and we need to be quick.”

With that they jump out of the truck, Louis and Liam collecting their guns from the locked box in the back of the truck. Harry’s learned a lot since he’s been outside of the Community, and one thing he’s learned is that these weapons are called rifles, and they’re capable of killing a man with a single pull of a trigger, and they’re absolutely not to be touched except in extreme emergencies.

Liam drags a steel ladder up to the wall and extends it as far as it can go, and once he’s climbed to the top, he drops the rope ladder Harry remembers from the night of their escape over the other side. Harry goes up first and Louis follows quickly behind, and once they’ve hit the ground on the other side, Harry takes off at a run for the theater, where he knows the Denouncement is already taking place.

“Harry!” Louis shouts, following a few paces behind. “Slow down! They could be armed!”

“There’s no weapons in here,” Harry says, tearing open the door to the theater. “It’s not allowed.”

Louis wants to argue, but he doesn’t, because a moment later Harry’s bursting into the auditorium, drawing a loud gasp and an eruption of quiet mumbling from the audience already assembled.

The first thing Harry sees is Niall, standing up on the Denouncement platform on the stage, hands bound in front of him and the noose hanging over his head, waiting to be lowered to be placed around his neck.

“Stop!” Harry screams, quickly gaining the attention of the Leaders surrounding Niall. “Let him go!”

“Easy,” Liam mutters, but Harry ignores him, running up the center aisle right to the stage, glaring at the men surrounding Niall. Liam sighs and jogs after him, butting directly in front of Harry and pointing his gun up at the Leader standing closest to Niall.

“Put the weapons down,” Liam demands, referring to the sticks each of the Leaders have in their hands, ready to beat Niall if he even thinks about escaping. Harry forces himself not to look at Niall, can’t bear to see him like this, can’t bear to witness the fear he knows is in his friend’s eyes.

“Get out,” the Leader demands, pointing his stick at Liam now. “You are not welcome here.”

Liam rolls his eyes and cocks his gun, aiming very carefully and then shooting the Leader in the hand, effectively knocking the stick out of his grip and destroying everything below his wrist in the process.

A panic erupts from the audience, everyone screaming and attempting to run, but when Harry turns around, he finds Louis blocking the doors, telling everyone to stay calm and sit down. 

“Drop. The. Weapons,” Liam says again. The other two Leaders drop their sticks immediately, the wounded one holding his injured hand to his chest and falling silent, staring fearfully at Liam.

Louis gets the situation with the audience settled quickly, and finally a hush falls over the theater, all eyes on the three intruders.

“Your call,” Liam says, turning to Harry. “You know best, here.”

Harry nods, still not meeting anyone’s eye. He chews at his lip for a moment and then climbs up onto the stage, ignoring the quiet murmuring from the crowd as he turns his back to Niall and the Leaders, facing the audience.

“What they’re doing to you here is wrong,” Harry says, voice echoing through the theater. Everyone falls silent again, and Harry can feel the Leaders attempting to intervene behind him, but they’re all very conscious of Liam and the weapon in his hands, so no one tries anything. “They’re lying to you,” Harry continues. “There is an outside, and it’s nothing like they say it is. No, it’s not as cushy as it is in here, but it’s free, and it’s beautiful, and nobody is feeding you lie after lie.”

No one reacts, or moves at all, but Harry makes eye contact with a few of the children in the front of the theater, and pauses. He knows each and every single one of them, was present on the day of each of their births, and it makes him want to cry to know that they’re missing out on everything that’s out there, and that that’s intentionally being done to them. 

“Haven’t you ever wondered why they cage us in here like animals?” Harry asks the silent room. “It’s so that we won’t get out and see what’s out there, so that we won’t go live free, normal lives, because, let me tell you something, there are people out there! There are people who don’t look like us, there are people who are completely different from us, and _that’s_ why this place even exists! They talk so much crap about the days of anarchy, but you know what the biggest atrocity really is? They’re breeding us like dogs in here so that someday we’ll have a big enough race to go out and squash all the people who aren’t like us!” he shouts, turning to glare at the Leaders for a moment before he continues. “You think that’s what the sun wants? You think the sun would have created anyone that was meant to be destroyed by anyone else? No! They’re wrong! And the longer this goes on, the more danger the world will be in! Now you can stay here and live your comfortable little lives in ignorance and continue being bred like animals, or you can come with us and see what’s really out there!” he says, waiting for someone, anyone to react.

Still, though, no one moves, and Harry blinks, looking down at Liam.

“That wasn’t really what I meant for you to do,” Liam says, shoulders tense. “Grab Niall, we’ve got to _go_.”

Harry whirls around, eyes finally landing upon Niall, who has tears streaming down his face, bound hands shaking. “No, run!” Niall bites out, but before Harry can even react, he’s being tackled to the stage and the theater erupts into panic once more, unleashing absolute pandemonium.

Harry looks desperately toward Liam, but people keep running in front of him, shoving him around and getting in the way of his shot, and Liam wouldn’t dare take a shot he wasn’t completely sure of, lest he hit Harry or Niall or someone else by accident. The last thing Harry sees before he’s dragged off of the stage and behind the curtain by the Leaders is Liam frantically trying to get his sightline back, but he doesn’t succeed before Harry’s already gone.

In what feels like a fraction of a second, Harry’s hands are bound behind his back and he’s being tugged to his feet, a thick rope wound around his neck.

“No!” he screams, doing his best to fight, but suddenly there are Leaders everywhere, more men in yellow outfits than Harry even knew existed, and they’re all surrounding him, quickly and effectively securing a noose to the steel bar that supports the stage curtain.

“Louis!” Harry shrieks, trying with all of his strength to free his own hands. Liam is probably still closer, probably still his best bet, but for some reason the only thing Harry can do is call out for Louis, the one person who makes him feel safest in the world. “Louis! Help me!”

“Apologize,” says the Leader Liam injured earlier, his face mere inches from Harry’s own suddenly. Harry recognizes him from the picture Leigh-Anne showed them, knows exactly who he is. “Apologize for your sins, and maybe the sun will show you mercy.”

“Louis!” Harry screams again, and now he’s crying, still struggling against the rope cutting into his wrists, and the one cutting into his neck. 

“Apologize!” the Leader demands again, tugging the rope around Harry’s neck a little tighter.

“No!” Harry spits, even as the rope tightens more. “ _Louis_!”

“Apologize!” shouts the Leader, pulling the noose tight enough to completely cut off Harry’s oxygen. “Apologize, now!”

Harry just chokes, and the Leader tugs the rope again so hard that Harry’s feet are barely even touching the ground anymore, his toes barely brushing the scuffed wooden floor. 

_This is it_ , he thinks. This is how he’s going to die, not even on the stage, but behind the curtain, hidden, forgotten, just like the world before he came into it. He’s not even going to make it to his 18th birthday, he’s never going to see Louis again, or Niall or Jade or anyone or anything, and the whole world is just going to go on without him, a world he never even really got a chance to be part of.

He hears three quick gunshots, and then another loud bang, but his vision is going dark, his lungs screaming for air that he can’t suck in. He’s still mouthing Louis’s name, even as he’s dying, losing the energy in his body to keep fighting.

Just as the darkness starts to take over, the pressure around his neck loosens, and he’s falling heavy to the floor, gasping and coughing so hard it hurts more than the choking did. There are arms around him, but he can only barely feel them, can only barely register the voice whispering in his ear.

“You’re okay,” the voice is saying, Louis’s voice, Harry’s pretty sure, and so then those are probably his arms around him, as well, and Louis means safety, at least in Harry’s mind, so he nuzzles closer, hands still tied behind his back, and Louis holds him tighter. “Get up, Harry, please stand up. Liam’s got Niall, we’ve got to run for it.”

Somehow, Harry pushes through the fog in his mind and opens his eyes, letting Louis get him to his feet, and then they’re running, and Harry still can’t really breathe right, never fully recovered from almost choking to death, but they’re outside and the cool air feels good but Harry’s legs won’t work right, and Louis has to carry most of his weight as they make a break for the ladder.

Louis cuts the rope around Harry’s wrists while Liam and Niall start up the ladder, and then Harry follows them, still coughing and wheezing but forcing himself to keep climbing, keep going, all the way up to the sky and then over the top, and then back down to the safe, solid ground.

Harry blacks out before they get back into the truck, hitting the ground hard before they’ve even gotten out of the trees, but someone must carry him the rest of the way, because next thing he knows he’s laying against Louis’s chest, his lungs finally figuring out how to work again.

He gasps loudly and hacks another heaving cough, turning over in Louis’s arms and all but implanting himself into his chest. He feels like he’s dying, even though he knows he’s not; his chest is squeezed tight by something deep inside of him, and he’s still seeing stars even with his eyes open, and he sobs into the crook of Louis’s elbow and tries his fucking hardest to keep breathing but it’s so hard, it’s so hard-

“It’s a panic attack,” Louis’s saying, voice soft and soothing, right up against Harry’s ear. “Just breathe, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Harry listens to him, takes his advice, focuses all of his energy on breathing in and then out, in and then out, and finally the pressure in his chest starts to dissipate, and his vision clears. He goes lax in Louis’s arms, exhausted, and Louis just pets his hair for a bit, gently asking him to come back until Harry finally feels like he’s back in his body.

He sits up, their situation coming back to him slowly, and then it hits him that it’s over, they’re leaving, and he can’t even remember if they got what they came for. He looks around frantically, eyes landing on Niall, who happens to already be watching him, hugging his knees to his chest and crying quietly.

“Niall,” Harry breathes, throwing himself at his friend with every ounce of energy still left in his body. Niall uncurls, hugs him tight, buries his face into his shoulder and sobs. “What were you thinking?” Harry hisses, but he’s crying, too, holding Niall as tight as he physically can.

“I’m sorry,” Niall says, so, so quietly, voice shaking so hard Harry’s worried it’ll break. “I just wanted to clear my head, I had no idea that-”

“I know,” Harry says, before Niall can get himself worked up. “I know. It’s okay. You scared the shit out of me, Ni, I thought they were going to kill you.”

“They _were_ going to kill me,” Niall says, voice muffled into Harry’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Harry says again. “It’s over.”

Niall sobs again, pushing his face into Harry’s shoulder a little harder. “They almost killed you,” he whimpers. “They almost-”

“Stop,” Harry says firmly. “I’m fine, see? We’re fine.”

They’re quiet for a bit, just holding each other, letting it all soak in. Eventually, Niall hiccups a little, and Harry pulls away to look at his face.

“I saw Jade kissing Perrie,” Niall says to his own knees. 

“I know,” Harry says, feeling awful, squeezing Niall’s shoulder gently.

Niall breathes in deep, lets it out slowly, and then shakes his head. Harry looks away, turns around to find that Louis and Robert have crawled up into the front seat with Liam, and they’re alone in the back, just him and Niall.

“It’s not even that I want her, or that I’m in love with her or anything,” Niall says. “It’s just, like… I was so used to the idea of marrying her and spending the rest of my life with her, and it’s so jarring that that’s not what’s going to happen now,” he says, shaking his head again.

“I know, I get it,” Harry says, glancing up toward the front seat where Louis is sitting, head leaning against the window. “There’s a lot of things that are different now.”

Niall nods, following Harry’s line of vision. Harry looks down quickly, and Niall huffs a quiet laugh. “You, too?” he says, smiling gently when Harry looks up.

“No,” Harry says. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what’s stopping you?” Niall asks. 

Harry chews on his lip, glancing at Louis again and then shaking his head. “Do you remember Joseph?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Niall frowns, shaking his head slowly. “Joseph?”

“I was ten,” Harry says, choking up a little. “You were eleven.” 

Niall’s eyes widen. “Oh,” he breathes. “Harry-”

“Every time he so much as breathes in my direction, I think of what happened to Joseph,” Harry says. “Every time he gives me butterflies in my stomach, or makes my heart beat faster, or makes my cheeks turn pink, I-”

“Mate,” Niall says, chuckling quietly like he can’t help it. “No offense, but you just gave that whole speech to the Community, and you’re still letting what happened to Joseph hold you back?”

“I don’t know why,” Harry says, rubbing at his face. “It’s like you being upset about Jade. It’s just something I can’t shake,” he says, chewing on his lip again.

Niall huffs a humorless laugh, staring at his knees for another moment. “Well,” he says finally, “we should both move the fuck on, huh?”

Harry laughs, collapsing forward into Niall’s chest and letting Niall hold him for the rest of the drive back to London. They’ve both got wounds, they all do, but they’ve all got each other, as well, and a whole lot of help to start healing.


	13. Chapter 13

The sun has mostly set by the time they get back to the university, and Harry thinks he could sleep for a month, can hardly wait to get upstairs and do exactly that. It turns out that everyone is waiting for them in the lounge, though, and they have been all day, and Harry supposes they have quite a bit to tell everyone.

Jade takes off at a run for Niall as soon as they enter the lounge, jumping into his arms and hugging him so hard she nearly knocks him over.

“Never fucking do that again!” she shouts, digging her face into his neck and then pulling away to punch him in the chest. “I was so _fucking_ scared!”

“I’m sorry,” Niall says, reaching out to pull her back in. “Trust me, I’m never stepping foot outside by myself again.”

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she breathes, hugging him for another moment before pulling away and turning on Harry. She’s about to shout at him for something, too, Harry can tell, but she spots the bruises on his neck first, and she gasps. “What the fuck happened to you?” she says, rushing over to get better look.

“You’re enjoying that new word you’ve learned, hm?” Harry says, hoping to diffuse some of the tension. It doesn’t work.

“Did someone choke you?” Jade asks, looking close to tears. “Harry, what-”

“They almost got me,” Harry says quietly, glancing at Niall. “But I’m alright, see?”

“Oh, dear,” Jade says, fussing over his neck for another second before hugging him tight. “I’m so glad you’re all alright,” she says. “We were so worried.”

“I need a nap,” Niall yawns. “They kept me in the bloody basement of the Leaders’ apartments all night. Did you know they use electricity in there? Fuckin’ hypocrites,” he mutters.

Everyone mutters their agreement, and there are a few more hugs and pleasantries before Harry finds an acceptable moment to sneak off and up the stairs to his bed, looking forward to a nice, long sleep.

“Harry,” Louis calls, jogging up the stairs behind him. Harry turns slowly, blinking at him sleepily, and Louis smiles, nodding toward his own bedroom door. “Can we talk a minute?”

“Sure,” Harry says, following Louis to the end of the corridor and then into his room. He’s never been in here before, but there’s not much to it; there’s a mattress on the ground, just like his own, with a few messy blankets on top of it, and a few small piles of Louis’s clothes lining the wall opposite the windows. Louis leads the way to his bed and plops down, gesturing for Harry to sit down next him, so Harry shuffles over and sits down cross-legged at the foot of the bed.

They’re quiet for a moment, and Harry’s just about to ask what this is about when Louis finally takes a deep breath and meets his eye.

“So,” he says, looking more unsure than Harry’s ever seen him look, “who’s Joseph?”

Harry blinks, his entire world coming down around him. He feels the urge to get up and run, but Louis looks so soft, so warm and open, Harry just breathes deep and slow and forces himself to maintain eye contact. 

“What?” he asks, sounding about as shocked and uncomfortable as he feels. Louis catches on, clearly, but he doesn’t back down, doesn’t relent.

“I wasn’t trying to listen, I swear,” Louis says. “But I could hear you and Niall talking in the truck, and I just…” he shrugs, looking sheepish.

“Fuck,” Harry breathes, looking down. His chest feels tight again, like it did in the truck, and he kind of feels like he needs to scream, but Louis speaks again before he can.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, obviously,” Louis says. “But you sounded upset. I just want to know if there’s anything I can do, anything I can say to make it better,” he says. 

“No, thank you,” Harry says quietly, pushing himself up off the mattress and making for the door with every intention to go get into his bed and hide under the covers and cry himself to sleep, awkward and embarrassed and overwhelmed with everything.

“Wait!” Louis calls, sounding panicked, and it stops Harry in his tracks. “Wait, I’m sorry, please don’t go.”

“Look, I really don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Harry says, turning to glance at Louis over his shoulder. “Especially not- not with you,” he says.

“Okay,” Louis says. “Okay, fine, we don’t have to talk about it, just, please don’t go,” he says, and he sounds scared enough that Harry turns back fully to face him, confused.

“Why?” he asks, studying Louis’s face.

Louis breaks a little, hiccuping quietly and rubbing at his face. “I almost lost you today,” he says, so quiet Harry almost doesn’t even hear him. 

Harry blinks, bewildered. “What?”

“Can you please just come back here?” Louis says, looking up at him with tears in his eyes. Harry blinks again, his feet carrying his numb body back to the bed on instinct, desperate to do anything, everything it takes to get those terrible tears out of Louis’s pretty, pretty eyes.

He sits back down at the end of the bed, and Louis reaches for him immediately, fingertips brushing over his bruised neck. His fingers are absolutely freezing, but that’s not the reason why Harry flinches.

“I knew from the second you started preaching that they were going to try and get you,” Louis says. “So I went around and up into the wings of the theater and, sure enough, I heard you start screaming. I was trying so fucking hard to get to you, and when I finally came around the corner, you were already hanging, and I didn’t even think- I just shot all of them, and then I jumped-” he says, a couple tears slipping down his cheeks. “I was so fucking scared, Harry,” he says, hiccuping again.

Harry’s trying his absolute hardest to keep his own tears at bay, because one of them needs to be the strong one right now, and usually it’s Louis, but Louis needs a break right now, needs Harry to be that for him for once. 

“I don’t know what I would’ve done,” Louis says, hands twitching like he wants to reach out again, wiping hard at his face instead. “I don’t know what I would’ve fucking done if I didn’t get to you.”

“I’m okay,” Harry says, sounding a lot less than okay even to his own ears. Louis sobs a little and finally gives in, reaching out for him, and Harry goes easily, collapsing into his chest.

“I don’t know who Joseph is,” Louis says into Harry’s hair, “or was, or what he meant to you, but in the short time I’ve known you, you’ve become absolutely irreplaceable to me. I just want you to know that I would do anything, absolutely _anything_ to keep you safe,” he says, hands curling into fists in the back of Harry’s shirt.

Harry can’t be the strong one, especially not right now, with Louis crying into his shoulder and saying things like that. Harry whimpers once, pressing his face into Louis’s neck and waiting until he’s got his breathing under control before he says anything at all.

“Joseph was a member of the Community,” Harry says finally, voice quiet, tired and raspy. 

Louis stiffens a little, pulls away slowly, meeting Harry’s eyes and nodding for him to go on. Harry pauses, takes a moment to collect every last shard of his courage, and goes on.

“He was a few years older than me. He was Denounced when I was ten,” Harry says. “For homosexuality.”

“Oh,” Louis says, seemingly an involuntary noise. His lip trembles, so Harry looks down, tells the rest of the story to Louis’s blankets.

“I didn’t even know him,” he says, choking up a little, voice going high. “I’d seen him around, but children don’t interact with the adults, I’d never even talked to him. But he got hanged right in front of me, Louis, I listened to his neck snap because he loved another man,” he says, wiping furiously at the tears that drip down his cheeks.

“Harry,” Louis breathes, dragging him back into his arms. “I don’t-”

“The other guy killed himself before they could get to him,” Harry says. “Both of their wives had to become Maidens, and we all knew why.”

“I’m so sorry,” Louis breathes, petting at his hair.

“Every time you get close to me,” Harry says, sobbing quietly, “I think of him. I think of how he must have felt, the same way I feel now, and he gave into it and he died for it,” he cries.

“No one’s going to hurt you, Harry,” Louis says, holding him so tight Harry can hardly breathe. Harry doesn’t want to breathe right now, anyway. “Not here, especially not for that.”

“I know that,” Harry says. “But I can’t shake it. Every time I start to feel something around you, I can hear his neck snapping in my mind,” he admits.

Louis doesn’t say anything for a moment, just keeps holding him. “Well,” he says finally, “I guess that’s a pretty good reason for why you keep running away from me,” he mumbles.

“I’m sorry,” Harry sobs again. “I’m sorry, Louis.”

“Don’t apologize,” Louis says, pressing his fingertips into Harry’s back like he wants to tear him open, expel all of his demons into the night. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for anything, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, not for me, not for anyone,” he says. 

Harry pulls away, watching Louis’s face for a moment, inspecting his red cheeks and wet eyelashes, the magnificent blue of his eyes, made even sparklier by the tears. His gaze shifts down to Louis’s mouth, his pink lips puffy from chewing on them, his sharp little teeth beyond them, clenched between his jaw. Louis doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t even breathe, just watches, waits, so full of hope Harry can smell it on him.

Harry can’t, though, he can’t close the gap, has used every last piece of his courage and he’s all dry by now, empty and so, so tired. He crumples, letting Louis catch him, and Louis carefully shifts until they’re lying down, Harry’s head pillowed on Louis’s chest and their legs tangled up in the blankets.

Harry’s still got his shoes on, and Louis’s still wearing his coat, but they fall asleep just like that, the world turning quietly beneath them.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time Harry wakes up in the morning, the sun has already risen, shining in through the windows and directly into his eyes. He makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat and turns his face to press it into his pillow, only he finds that it’s not his pillow, it’s Louis’s chest, and Louis’s arms are still locked around him.

Louis’s already awake when Harry lifts his head up to check, and he’s dragging his fingertips up and down Harry’s spine lazily, staring up at the ceiling. He startles when he realizes that Harry’s awake and looking at him, but he smiles immediately and hugs him a little tighter.

“Good morning,” he says, hand stilling in the middle of Harry’s back, fingers splayed out.

“Morning,” Harry yawns, rubbing his face against Louis’s shoulder before rolling off of him. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t mean to trap you in.”

“Wasn’t trapped,” Louis says, rolling onto his side to look at Harry’s face. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” Harry says, sitting up slowly, all of his joints popping and cracking.

“We can still catch breakfast if we go now,” Louis says, but he makes no move to get up.

Harry doesn’t read into it, picks all of his limbs up off the bed one by one and reaches up into a full body stretch once he’s standing, yawning once more before he heads for the door. “C’mon, then,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at Louis, grinning to himself when Louis scrambles to catch up.

Everyone else is already in the kitchen when they arrive, but they’re mostly done eating by now. Harry’s got his heart set on heading straight behind the counter to get himself a bowl of cereal, but Jade intercepts him on the way, leaping into his arms.

“Happy birthday!” she squeals, just about hugging the life out of Harry. Niall is right on her heels, wrapping his arms around both of them and laughing into Harry’s ear.

“Wait, what?” Louis says, as Jade and Niall finally pull away. “It’s your birthday?”

“First of February,” Harry says, turning to him with a shy smile.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Louis says, moving in for a hug. “We could’ve had a party!”

“I don’t want a party,” Harry laughs, pushing him away playfully. “I’m just happy to be here with you all,” he says, meeting Niall and Jade’s eyes briefly.

“Sit, I’m getting your breakfast,” Louis says, manhandling Harry into a chair at the table and then running off. Niall catches Harry’s eyes again once they’re all seated, and Harry tries to avoid it, but Niall leans in anyway.

“So,” Niall says, quiet enough that no one will hear them outside of their own conversations. “You slept in his room last night?”

“It’s not like that,” Harry says, rolling his eyes. “We were talking, and we fell asleep,” he says.

“Woah, wait,” Jade chimes in from Harry’s other side. “You and Louis? Really?”

“No,” Harry says pointedly. “Well, not really. I don’t know.”

He looks down, and something in the look Niall gives her must tell Jade to back off, because she just squeezes his arm and turns away, inserting herself into Perrie and Leigh-Anne’s conversation.

Louis comes back hardly a minute later with a heaping bowl of Coco Pops, setting it down in front of Harry and then sitting down across from him with his own. They don’t talk to each other much throughout breakfast, but once everyone’s finished and starts dispersing to go do whatever it is they all do during the day, Louis catches Harry by the arm and smiles his brightest, warmest smile at him.

“What do you want to do today?” Louis asks. “It’s your birthday, you can do anything you like.”

“I don’t know,” Harry shrugs, very aware of the feeling of Louis’s skin touching his own, the way it makes his stomach swoop. It doesn’t scare him, somehow, not today, and he thinks maybe 18 will be his year. “I was kind of just hoping to sit around today, have a lazy day,” he says, watching Louis carefully.

“That sounds nice,” Louis says. “Maybe we can go sit in the lounge and read?”

“Yeah,” Harry grins. “Yeah, that sounds fun.”

Louis leads the way up to the lounge and picks Harry’s book off of the shelf, bringing it over to the sofa and plopping down beside Harry. “Here,” he says, handing it over and holding his arms out for Harry to settle back against his chest, like usual.

“Will you read to me, today?” Harry asks. “Since it’s my birthday?”

“I guess so,” Louis sighs, but he’s still smiling, taking the book back and leaning against Harry’s chest, instead. Harry shifts to get comfortable, and Louis ends up lying mostly on top of him, head resting back against Harry’s shoulder while he reads.

They stay like that for a while, until Louis’s voice is raspy from reading out loud for so long and there’s only a few pages left in the book. Harry’s hardly even listening to the story, focused much more intently on the sound of Louis’s voice than anything else.

Something about it makes him feel so warm, so safe and so in control when he winds his arms around Louis’s chest and holds him, resting his cheek against the top of Louis’s head. Like this, it’s not hard to imagine spending forever with Louis in his arms; it almost feels attainable, like something Harry is allowed to want, is allowed to have, if he can just push through the last bit of fear in his mind that’s still holding him back and just go for it.

Suddenly, all he can think about is what it would be like to kiss Louis, how it would be to feel Louis’s lips against his own, body under Harry’s, warm and solid and just as willing as Harry is, just as ready to finally stop dancing around whatever this is and finally get down to it.

Fuck it, he thinks, it’s his birthday, he’s 18 years old, and he’s ready to let go of the last piece of the Community he was still holding onto, that last bit of stubborn trauma and pain. He counts to ten, and then to twenty, and then to ten once more, and then shifts his head, pressing a soft, careful kiss against Louis’s temple and pausing to see how Louis will react.

Louis freezes, voice cutting out mid sentence, and Harry starts to panic a little, thinking he’s surprised him in a bad way. After a few long, scary seconds, though, Louis turns to look up at him, eyes wide.

“Did you just kiss my head?” he asks, voice a lot softer than it was a minute ago.

“Um,” Harry says, nodding once. “Yes.”

“Oh,” Louis says, looking back at the book. “Okay.”

“Is,” Harry chokes, swallowing hard. “Is that okay?”

“I don’t know,” Louis says, still facing away from him, not moving a muscle. “Is it?”

Harry closes his eyes, ponders the question for a long moment. Is it okay? Is it okay that he just kissed Louis’s head, and now he’s thinking about kissing his mouth, and he’s terrified but he liked it, terrified _because_ he liked it, and he’s wondering if he’ll like kissing Louis’s mouth any better? Is any of that okay?

“I think so,” Harry says, waiting for Louis to look up at him again. “I think it is.”

“I think so, too,” Louis says, blinking up at him. Harry doesn’t move, so Louis doesn’t, either, until finally he smiles. “Harry?”

Harry doesn’t waste another second, leaning in and pressing his lips against Louis’s quickly, too hard, too fast, too unsure.

He’s never kissed anyone before, isn’t even really sure what he’s supposed to do, but Louis takes over before he can begin to panic. He kisses Harry sweetly, dropping the book in his hand and reaching up to cup Harry’s jaw, lips breaking apart for less than a millisecond before they’re kissing again.

It’s nice, Harry decides, really fucking nice, especially when Louis shifts and kicks the book off the sofa altogether, turning over and straddling Harry’s lap so that he can have more leverage to kiss him harder, sucking on his bottom lip and licking into his mouth. It’s a lot, but it’s not too much, far from it, even as Harry’s hands find Louis’s hips and hold on for dear life and Louis makes this tiny noise into Harry’s mouth that makes Harry’s entire body feel like he’s on fire, flames licking every inch of his skin.

Once they’ve started, it’s hard to stop, especially since Louis is caging him in, kissing the breath out of his lungs and Harry’s loving every fucking second of it, more than happy to spend the rest of his birthday just like this, with Louis’s tongue in his mouth and his hands on his body and the rest of the cold, empty world forgotten outside.

They don’t hear the sound of footsteps approaching, obviously, since Harry’s having trouble hearing anything at all outside of the rushing of blood in his ears, but they do hear the door to the lounge creaking open, and Louis jumps off of Harry so quickly he nearly jumps right off the sofa entirely.

“Oh,” says a voice, and Harry turns around to find Perrie in the doorway, looking shocked but delighted, eyes flicking quickly between them. “Sorry, am I interrupting?”

“Not at all, babes,” Louis says through gritted teeth. Perrie just grins, and Louis huffs. “Need something?”

“Was just coming to tell you that Liam’s making lunch,” Perrie says, still just standing there smirking at the two of them like she knows exactly what’s been going on in here for the past- well, however long it’s been, Harry lost track of time the second Louis started touching him.

“Cool, thanks,” Louis says, sounding about two seconds from getting up to personally escort Perrie out of the room.

“Harry, he wants to know what you’d like for dinner?” Perrie says, playing dumb, leaning against the door jamb. “It’s your birthday, after all, and usually we do whatever the birthday person wants-”

“I’ll think about it,” Harry says, giving her a tight smile, cheeks on fire. “Tell Liam I’ll let him know at lunch.”

“Okay,” Perrie shrugs, turning to go. Harry’s just about to melt into the sofa cushions and try his best to disappear when Perrie turns back again. “One more thing, boys,” she says, eyes glittering with mirth as they settle on Louis. “You know you’ve got a whole private room upstairs, right?”

“Fuck off,” Louis laughs, picking up a pillow off the sofa and throwing it as hard as he can. Perrie laughs brightly, slipping out just in time, and the pillow bounces off the door and falls to the floor.

“Well,” Louis sighs, running a hand through his hair and wincing at Harry. “Looks like everyone’s going to have heard about this by lunch.”

Harry doesn’t even have the capacity to feel embarrassed, laughing as he reaches out to pull Louis back into his arms. “Thoughts on skipping lunch and taking Perrie’s advice to move this to your room?”

“Whatever you want, birthday boy,” Louis grins, slipping off the sofa and grabbing Harry’s hand to pull him upstairs. Harry giggles brightly, stumbling along behind him, kicking Louis’s bedroom door closed once they’re inside and not caring an ounce who hears it.

18, he thinks, is off to a pretty great start.


	15. Chapter 15

Communication is slow these days, even for people within the same cities, because of the wide scale electrical grid damage from over twenty years ago. When the President of the United States set off the EMPs and started the apocalypse, the entire world sustained massive, long-lasting and critical damage, and even now, the majority of the world remains without electricity. Some groups have fuel-powered generators, like they have at the University, but gadgets from the time before like mobile cellular devices and internet connections are long lost to the past.

Somehow, though, Leigh-Anne still gets news and intell from her mysterious sources every now and again, and she keeps them all updated on the things going on around the London area and, sometimes, when the news is big enough to reach her, the rest of the world. She usually brings it up over dinner, gives them her scattered, occasional reports in casual conversation, so when she comes running into the lounge on a quiet, late Sunday morning, with a piece of paper clutched in her fist, they all fall silent.

“Something’s happened,” she says gravely. “Is everyone here?”

“Think so,” Louis says, glancing around. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know all the details,” Leigh-Anne says, glancing at the paper in her hand again. “Apparently there’s rumors that there was some sort of uprising in the Community after your little shenanigan last week,” she says, glancing up at Harry. “No one knows for sure, obviously, but word is spreading about some unrest amongst the people inside the Community.”

“That’s brilliant,” Perrie says, sitting up from where she’s been slouched over on Jade’s shoulder on the sofa. “Surely that means we’ve got people in there on our side, right?”

“Possibly,” Leigh-Anne shrugs. “There’s no way to know for certain, it could be exactly the opposite.”

“There’s no way that it isn’t good news for us,” Perrie says. “Harry, remind us, what was your speech about, again?”

“That there’s a world outside of the Community and everything inside those walls is a lie,” Harry says, mouth dry. “And that nobody should be participating in what the Community aims to do.”

“See?” Perrie says, looking up at Leigh-Anne. “If that’s the thing that sparked an uprising, it’s clearly in our favor. I say we go back in now, and help them finish the job.”

“No, it’s too risky,” Louis says, chewing at his thumb nail. “Leigh-Anne is right, we don’t know for sure that we’ve brought people to our side or just freaked them out and now they’re acting out in fear of change,” he says.

“Damn,” Perrie huffs. “Do you have any other information, Leigh-Anne?”

“Not really,” Leigh-Anne mutters, scanning the paper once more. “Just that something went down inside the Community in the past few days. I wish we could just have someone on in the inside there to let us know,” she sighs, plopping down on the arm of the sofa beside Perrie.

“Well, that’s it,” Perrie says. “We’ll send in a spy.”

“No,” Jade says quickly, glaring at Perrie. “Not after what almost happened to Niall and Harry.”

“But-”

“ _No_ ,” Jade cuts her off. “Not happening. We’ll find another way.”

“Boring,” Perrie mutters, slumping back against the sofa in defeat.

“We also have to consider that they might have armored up since we last had people on the inside,” Leigh-Anne says. “If they know we’re onto them, they might have beefed up their operation.”

“That’s true,” Louis says. “Last time they were only armed with sticks, and I took out three of the Leaders single handedly,” he shrugs.

“But you also took out three Leaders,” Perrie says. “That weakens them.”

“And any firearms they might have obtained since then strengthens them,” Louis says. “I took out the Prime Minister and the French and American presidents, Pez, the Community is now a lawless place with a personal vendetta against this group,” he says.

“What about another heist?” Liam says. “Go in again like the first time, get some more refugees and build ourselves an army?”

“That’s an option,” Louis says. “But what if they’re waiting for us with their own army as soon as we get inside?”

“Same as last time,” Liam says. “We went in on Christmas so that they’d never expect us, right? And it would have been perfect, if we hadn’t woken the babies-”

“ _You_ woke the babies,” Perrie mutters.

“Shut up,” Liam says. “So we just go in with the same plan, execute it more carefully, come away with even more refugees.”

“Is there anything like that coming up?” Perrie says. “Any day that the Community has its guard down?”

“The Community always has its guard down,” Jade says. “At least when we were there. Would kind of break the illusion of there being nothing outside the walls if there were armed guards there all the time,” she mutters.

“Weddings are your best bet, I’d think,” Harry says. “But the next won’t be until June. We don’t have that much time, right?”

“No,” Louis says. “If we do anything, it’s got to be within the next few days, for certain. We don’t know what’s being done to the people in there,” he says.

“I say we go with Perrie’s plan,” Harry admits. “Armor up extra well, and just charge in. Who’s to say they’re not just guarded all the time now? We may never find the perfect opportunity,” he says.

“Yes,” Perrie says. “Finally, someone who’s thinking.”

“Perrie, would you shut it?” Louis rolls his eyes. “We don’t have the resources to do that. As much as I’d love to barge in there in a bulletproof suit, guns ablaze, we physically can’t do that, and if we go in unprepared, we’re going to fail,” he says.

“I think we’re approaching this wrong,” Jade says thoughtfully, earning herself the attention of the entire room. “I think they want us to come back.”

“Can’t drop a bombshell like that and not go on, love,” Perrie says. “Explain.”

“Think about it,” Jade says. “They took Niall, and left Robert for bait. They had to know we’d come knocking, right? They had to have expected that,” she says. “Maybe they didn’t expect us to come armed, or skilled, but they had to expect us in some capacity.”

“She’s got a point,” Liam admits. “They let Harry get his whole speech out, and then attacked him first opportunity they got. They clearly see him as a threat, maybe more than anything else, right?”

Louis’s hand snakes across the floor next to Harry and he laces their fingers together, as if he’s not even thinking about it.

“And they left Niall standing there like chopped liver, without even restaining him. Seems like they’ve got some kind of end goal we’re not privy to,” Liam continues. “But we fucked it up, and now they need us to come back so they can finish what they started,” he says.

“Exactly,” Jade says. “So what if they’re just doing this to bait us back again?”

“We take the bait,” Harry says confidently. Everyone in the room turns to look at him, and Harry shrugs. “We go back, we figure out exactly what their plan is, and we fuck it up again.”

“So you’re proposing we just rush in there like idiots and hope we get lucky again?” Jade asks, skeptical.

“I don’t see what other option we have,” Harry says. “If it means that all of those little kids in there get to go free and live a real life, then, so what if they kill me?”

“No,” Jade says immediately.

“No,” Louis agrees, squeezing his hand hard. “No one is dying, you hear me?”

Harry rolls his eyes, but to be honest, he isn’t quite sure he’s much of the sacrificial type. He’s far too desperate to be able to see the change he’s made in the world, to be able to experience it, and while he would absolutely die for it if he had to, he’s secretly quite happy that no one seems willing to let him get that far.

“Honestly,” Perrie says, “it does worry me a bit that we’ll be fighting on their turf. I mean, you guys are right, we have absolutely no idea what they’ve got up their sleeves.”

“So let’s lure them off it,” Steve pipes up from the back of the room, sounding like it’s the easiest plan in the world.

“And how do we do that, exactly, Steve?” Louis frowns, turning to look at him.

“If they can bait us, we can bait them back,” Steve says. “Their leadership is weak right now, they’re emotional and impulsive and eager to do what it takes to quell us, I don’t think it’d be hard to lure them into a trap.”

“Alright, I like the sound of that,” Louis says, pondering.

“Are there any empty buildings in the compound that we could set fire to?” Steve asks. “Sounds drastic, I know, but it would set them after us for sure,” he says.

“There’s the second dorm building,” Harry says. “No one lives there.”

“The theater,” Niall says suddenly. “No one’s going to care about the dorm building. I say we burn the theater, send a real message about who they’re messing with,” he says.

“I say we burn the apartments, too,” Jade sniffs. “Burn those evil hypocrites to the ground.”

“We could siphon the petrol out of their generator and use it to make a couple of Molotov cocktails,” Steve suggests. “Damage their resources end a message at the same time?”

“Yes!” Harry says. “I don’t even know what means, but I love it.”

“It means that all the work we’d do on the ground would be stealthy enough,” Steve says. “We’d just have to go in long enough to siphon out the petrol, and then we could throw the Molotovs from the top of the wall and get out before anyone even wakes up,” he says.

“Okay, I think I can get behind this,” Louis says. “Sounds like our safest option yet.”

“Tell me more,” Perrie says, looking intrigued. “How exactly is this gonna work?”

“Well, we’d have to go in somewhere they wouldn’t see us, so maybe behind that abandoned building you mentioned,” Steve says, glancing at Harry. “Then we head to wherever the generator is, which I’m assuming is hidden somewhere behind the apartment building, and we’ll siphon out most of the petrol inside. I’ll have to build a siphon pump at some point, but it shouldn’t be too hard,” he shrugs. “Once we’ve got the petrol out we can get out of the compound and do the rest from on top of the wall, probably. All we have to do is fill bottles with the petrol and then put something in it to ignite — a piece of cloth, or something — and then when we’re ready we just light them, throw them through a window, and get the fuck out,” he says.

“And what about when we’re done?” Perrie asks. “What happens if they take the bait and come after us?”

“We’ll have to plan accordingly,” Louis says. “But I’d feel better fighting them face to face outside of the compound walls than inside. At least it’s a level playing field,” he says.

“Cool, spontaneous, I like it,” Perrie says. “I’m in.”

“Everyone?” Louis says, glancing around the room. “Any objections?”

There’s a quiet murmur of assent from the group, and Louis smiles, looking back toward Steve. “How long will it take you to make the siphon pump?”

“Not long, couple hours at most,” Steve says.

“Can it be ready to go by tomorrow night?” Louis says. “I think we should get this plan in action as soon as possible.”

“Absolutely,” Steve says, nodding to Jesy and Robert.

“Good,” Louis says. “Alright, we’ll plan to hit the road after dinner tomorrow night. We wanna strike in the middle of the night to raise as little alarm as possible before we’re done.”

“Yes sir,” Perrie says, leaning back into Jade’s side and effectively clocking out of the conversation.

Louis turns to Harry as the natural conversations start up again, leaning in close enough that no one else will be able to hear them.

“You better not try to pull any kind of martyr shit,” he says, jabbing one finger into Harry’s chest. “None of this is worth it if you- if you’re not here,” he says quietly.

“That’s not true,” Harry says, pulling Louis into his arms. “It’s worth it no matter what. To me, anyway. But, don’t worry, I’m not gonna die so long as I can help it,” he chuckles.

“Good,” Louis says, nuzzling into his chest. “Ugh, you’re making me soft.”

“Don’t get too soft now,” Harry teases. “We’re not done here.”

“I know,” Louis sighs. “I’m just not terribly eager to get you back into that place again. I swear, Harry, if anyone lays a single hand on you-”

“Shh,” Harry soothes, kissing his head. “It’ll be alright, I promise.”

Louis doesn’t say anything more, just sighs again and hugs Harry around his middle. Harry hugs him back and rest his chin on top of Louis’s head, staring blankly ahead at the fireplace and hoping, more than anything, that he’ll be able to keep that promise.


	16. Chapter 16

Harry’s sitting back against the wall of the truck, the crate of empty petrol cans bumping along noisily beside him. Louis’s on his other side, thigh firmly pressed against his own, but he’s not paying attention, busy going over the plans once again with Perrie and everyone else who’s squished into the back of the truck with them. Harry can’t listen to it again, though, or else he’ll vibrate right out of his skin; he just wants to do it, wants to stop talking about it and just get it done, so that they can finish this thing. All that lies on the other side of this project is the black abyss of uncertainty, but Harry knows that abyss better than anything else in the world, maybe, and he’s closer than ever to figuring out what lies within it.

There’s a trunk full of all of the empty glass bottles and rags they’ll need to make the bombs, and they’ve got a full can of petrol just in case something goes wrong and they need a backup plan. They could just go the safe route and use the petrol they already have, but Harry’s got his heart set on using the petrol from the generator, and at this point, no one can convince him otherwise.

They’re still a couple of hours out from the Community compound, but it’s already nearly midnight. Some of the others are asleep, slumped over on top of each other like what they’re about to do isn’t injecting fire directly into their bloodstreams and keeping them wide awake.

Louis shifts after a bit, leaning into Harry’s side and resting his head on his shoulder. Harry doesn’t move, keeping his gaze trained on his own shoes where his legs are splayed out in front of him, and Louis shifts again to look up at him.

“You alright?” Louis asks quietly. It’s noisy in the truck, with the engine running and all the petrol cans bumping about, but Louis’s voice still cuts through the silence that’s replaced all the voices in the time since Harry stopped paying attention. “You’re so tense.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, but he doesn’t elaborate, so Louis moves until his face is in Harry’s line of vision.

“You know we don’t have to do this?” Louis says. “I mean, we kinda do, we’ve come all the way here and it’s the next stage in our mission, but we can just use the petrol we already have, it’ll be plenty,” he says. “We don’t have to go in, Harry.”

“I want to,” Harry says lowly. “I want to go in.”

“Are you sure?” Louis asks. “You just seem so-”

“I want to go in,” Harry says, jaw clenched. “I’m not fucking doing this if we don’t get the petrol from inside. It’s not worth it otherwise.”

“Oh,” Louis says, sounding shocked. “Okay. I just-”

“Stop,” Harry mutters. “Just stop.”

“Hey, don’t you dare go rogue and independent right now,” Louis says. “We’re a team, Harry, all of us. This isn’t about you.”

It feels like a slap in the face, honestly, and Harry finally meets Louis’s eye.

“I know this means a lot to you,” Louis says, a little gentler now, “but I’ve got a whole team to keep safe. They’re my family, Harry, including you. I’m not letting anything happen to anyone tonight because you’ve got a vendetta,” he says.

“Whatever,” Harry breathes, slumping back against the wall and turning away. He gets all that, he does, but can’t Louis see how important this is to him? Can’t he tell how hurt Harry is, how deeply he’s been affected by all of this? Louis of all people should be able to see that, should be able to see why Harry, out of everyone, deserves to do this his way.

Louis doesn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him pout in isolation, cuddles closer and puts his head down on Harry’s shoulder again like he knows exactly how badly Harry wants to be left alone and he doesn’t care a bit. It makes Harry’s blood boil, makes his skin crawl with the need to get up, to get this over with, to watch the people who did this to him go up in flames.

He doesn’t get a second of sleep the entire ride to the compound, despite the fact that Louis falls asleep on top of him for the last two hours of the journey. He’s too anxious to sleep, too nervous and excited and terrified, he can’t even close his eyes.

They arrive outside of the Community compound around 2 in the morning, but they drive around the other side of the four walls this time, so they can go in behind the empty dorm building like they planned. The trees are thinner on this side, and there’s an abandoned, decrepit utility road where they leave the truck and go over the plan one more time.

“Right,” Louis says, slipping the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and slinging it around his back, the bag of supplies over his other shoulder. Harry’s got a pistol tucked into the back of his trousers, and Steve’s got a rifle of his own, along with an empty petrol can hanging in a sack over his shoulder. “Harry, Steve and I are going over the wall, the rest of you wait back here and don’t move a muscle until we’re back,” he says. “If anything goes wrong, be armed and ready to fight.”

“Please be careful,” Jade breathes, like if she speaks too loud, she’ll wake the whole Community. “Be safe, don’t risk anything, okay?” she says, hugging Harry quickly and planting a kiss to his cheek.

“We’ll be fine,” Harry says, barely hugging Jade back before he grabs hold of the ladder and starts tugging it toward the wall.

“Remember what I said,” Louis mutters, jogging to catch up and help Harry with the ladder. “We’re a team. Don’t go rogue.”

“Got it,” Harry says, not even glancing in Louis’s direction as they reach the wall and start extending the ladder.

Harry goes up and over first, dropping the rope ladder down the other side of the wall and climbing down fast. He waits only as long as he has to for Louis and Steve to get on the ground and then he’s off, heading straight for the Leaders’ apartments.

Steve takes over when they get there, hunting around in the dark for the generator. They find the breaker box on the side of the building and follow the wires around the back, and sure enough, there’s a small machine that Harry’s never noticed before sitting right there on the ground, humming quietly.

“Right,” Steve whispers, carefully placing the empty petrol cans down on the ground and kneeling beside the generator. “Louis, the hose.”

Louis pulls out the siphon pump from the bag slung over his shoulder, passing it down to Steve. Steve gets right to work uncapping the fuel tank and feeding the siphon hose into it, positioning one of the empty petrol cans at the other end of the hose and getting right down to business. 

Harry doesn’t pay much attention, tilting his head back to gaze up at the building in front of them. There are a few lights on here and there, way high up, and Harry can’t believe he never noticed them, though he’s sure that there’s always been a very strict plan in place to make sure that he never did.

It takes about fifteen minutes for Steve to fill the can, and by then Harry’s itching for something to happen, to feel the heat of the flames on his face when they finally burn this place down.

“I think that’s enough,” Louis says, picking up the can to see how much they’ve gotten. “Right?”

“Think so,” Steve says, pulling out the hose and handing it off to Louis. Louis shoves it back in his bag while Steve cleans up his things and gets up off the ground.

“That’s it?” Harry asks, underwhelmed. “We’re done?”

“We’ve got the petrol,” Louis says, gesturing to the can in his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Can’t we do something more?” Harry asks, looking at the generator. “I wanna, like, break it, or something.”

“Harry, we’re about to burn the whole place down,” Louis says. “What more could we do?”

“I thought we’d take all of the petrol in there,” Harry says, petulant. “It’s hardly sending a message if they don’t even know we burnt them down with their own gas.”

“But we’ll know,” Louis says. “Isn’t that good enough?” He sounds annoyed, like he’s just trying to get Harry to move on, and it pisses Harry off enough that he decides, fuck it, he’s going rogue.

“Whatever,” he mutters, waving Louis and Steve on, pretending to trudge along behind them. The second they’re around the corner, though, he drops to his knees beside the generator and pries the fuel tank cover open, scooping up a handful of pebbles from the ground and shoving them into the tank. He keeps going until something happens, which only takes about three handfuls of rocks; the generator clunks and then sputters to a stop, and the humming cuts out only a second before the lights in the building do. Satisfied, Harry clambers to his feet and takes off after Louis and Steve, finding them already at the wall and beginning to climb, the petrol can strapped safely to Steve’s back.

Harry’s veins start thrumming with excitement for what comes next, knowing what’s going to happen the second he gets over the wall. He turns back to give the compound one last look, the last time he’ll ever see it like this, the moonlight barely illuminating all the darkened, ancient buildings.

“Harry!” someone screams suddenly, and Harry looks up to find that Louis and Steve are already on top of the wall, looking panicked. “Come on!” Louis screams again, eyes wide.

Harry frowns, turning back to see what’s got Louis so freaked out, and finally he spots several people running straight for him in the darkness. His heart drops to his toes and he turns around frantically, grabbing hold of the ladder and beginning to climb.

They catch him, of course, because suddenly he’s trembling and he can’t climb fast enough, and they grab him around the waist and pull him off the ladder with no trouble at all. Harry doesn’t go without a fight, screaming and kicking and flailing for all he’s worth, but he’s no match for the men caging him in and dragging him away, far away from the sound of Louis still screaming on top of the wall.

“Let go of me!” Harry shouts, still fighting even though he knows he’s got no chance of breaking free. “They’ll kill you!” he screams, “they’ll kill all of you!”

“Shut up,” says a voice way too close to his ear. “Unless you want to wake the whole Community so they can come watch you die.”

Harry screams instead of whimpering, fighting the whole way as he’s dragged into the center of the compound, to the flagpole in the middle of the courtyard. He only stops fighting once he’s been successfully bound to the flagpole, hands tied behind him and his ankles tied tight against the base of the pole.

“Killing me won’t make any difference,” Harry spits, glaring at all of the men looking down at him. There’s at least five of them, but there are more vague human-shaped shadows lurking around in Harry’s periphery, and he has no idea how many of them there are in total. He doesn’t ever remember seeing so many Leaders in the same place at the same time, but some of the men in front of him look familiar, like the pictures Leigh-Anne showed him, but he can’t pick anyone important out of the lot.

“Maybe not, but it’ll be fun,” one of the men says, stepping much too close and reaching for the pistol in the back of Harry’s trousers. “What have we got here?”

“Fuck you,” Harry spits. “Fuck you, they’ll fucking kill all of you right before they burn this place to the fucking ground.”

“I hope you’re not planning to live long enough to see any of that happen,” the man says, and then Harry feels the cold barrell of his own pistol press into his side, right under his ribcage. He closes his eyes, leaning his head back against the pole and listening for any hint of Louis and the others, heart threatening to either beat out of his chest or just stop altogether out of absolute terror.

“Simon,” says one of the other men, gaining the attention of the one threatening Harry with his own gun, “they’re coming in.”

“Good,” Simon says, shifting to position himself behind Harry, keeping the gun where it is. “This ought to be fun.”

“Kill me, coward,” Harry spits, pressing himself back into the pole. He hasn’t a clue where the words are coming from, as every inch of his body is currently possessed with fear, but the words keep coming. “Just fucking kill me if that’s what you’re going to do.”

“Not yet,” Simon says, dragging the gun up the length of Harry’s torso and resting it against his neck, instead. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here, you know that?” Simon says lowly. “We almost had you last time, and you were stupid enough to come back, and now you’ve run all out of luck,” he hums.

“You deserve everything that’s coming to you,” Harry says, forcing his eyes open so he can stare up at the moon. Fuck the moon, he thinks, fuck it for all the times he’s gazed at it and asked it for help, for guidance, for answers. Fuck the moon for leading him here, and then having the audacity to stare down at him in the last few moments of his life. “We know everything,” he says, “and so does the rest of the world.”

“What world?” Simon says. “The world we obliterated before you were even born?”

“Oh, you think you can take credit for that?” Harry scoffs. “You aren’t shit, not to me, and certainly not to the rest of the world. I don’t even know your name.”

Simon growls lowly, pressing the gun hard against Harry’s jaw. “Your friend might have killed the Prime Minister and two Presidents, but they were hardly the ones in charge,” he spits. Harry’s struck a nerve, clearly, and it makes a sick sense of satisfaction curl in his chest. “If you think that I wasn’t a crucial member in the forming of this Community, then you’re even stupider than I already thought you were. You and the rest of the hellish world,” he says. “I brought this Community to life, and I’ll fight for it until the day I die,” he breathes, right into Harry’s ear.

“Then you’ll go down with it,” Harry says. “Because it all ends today, idiot.”

Simon just laughs, but just then, Harry spots Louis and the others coming around the corner of the apartment building, guns drawn. Harry closes his eyes again and tilts his face up toward the sky, surrendering his fate to whatever happens next.

There’s a round of gunshots, what sounds like back and forth, but Simon never moves the gun from Harry’s head, just knots a hand in the back of his shirt and holds him still. Harry doesn’t dare open his eyes, especially when the gunfire stops, and a disturbing silence falls over the air.

“Let him go,” Louis’s voice says, sounding like he’s only a few feet away. Harry fights the urge to sob, because now that he knows that Louis is here, that Louis is most likely about to watch him die, it all gets so much worse.

“And then what, you’ll kill me?” Simon says, amused. “I don’t think so.”

“Let him go, and we can talk,” says another voice, Perrie’s voice, sounding much calmer than Louis. “Or you can keep hiding behind him like a coward, and we’ll just shoot you now.”

“Something tells me you’ll shoot me either way,” Simon says, “so why don’t I just put a hole in his skull right now and we can all call it a night?”

“That’s not our goal,” Perrie says. “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk.”

“What is your goal, then?” Simon asks, moving the gun under Harry’s chin. Harry clenches his jaw and squeezes his eyes shut tighter, hoping Simon can’t feel the way he’s trembling.

“To liberate all of the people you’ve imprisoned with your bigotry,” Perrie says. “So put the fucking gun down and I’ll think about letting you walk out of here alive.”

Simon says something else, but Harry stops listening, peeling his eyes open to gaze up at the sky. He’s not making it out of here, he knows that much, and he’d like to see the stars just one more time, he thinks. He can’t keep his eyes trained upward very long, though, before his gaze drops down in front of him, immediately falling on Louis.

Louis looks absolutely devastated, his face and eyes red and wild, panicked and scared, more scared than Harry’s ever seen him. Louis clamps his mouth shut the second Harry looks at him, but he forces himself to smile, and Harry watches his lips shape out the words “it’s okay.”

It’s not okay, not at all. Nothing’s ever been less okay, actually. Harry fights the urge to close his eyes again and keeps his gaze locked on Louis’s instead, the rushing of blood in his ears blocking out the sound of Perrie and Simon still negotiating over his life.

“No matter what, you lose,” Perrie says, or at least Harry thinks that’s what he hears, he can’t really be sure. He’s going to pass out, probably. He just wishes this would end. “Go ahead and kill him, I’ll blow your brains out before you’ve even released the trigger.”

“Perrie,” Louis warns, eyes breaking away from Harry’s quickly. It breaks the spell, and Harry frantically follows Louis’s line of vision, eyes catching on Perrie raising her gun, as if getting ready to make good on her word.

“Do it,” Perrie says. “I don’t know what you think you’re gaining.”

“It’s not what I’m gaining,” Simon says, and he sounds like he’s smiling, the sick bastard, as he drags the gun up and finally rests it right against Harry’s temple. “It’s what I’m taking away from you, isn’t it?”

Perrie shifts uncomfortably, and Louis curses under his breath, knuckles turning white around the grip he has on his gun. 

“That’s it, hm?” Simon says. “You’ve made it all worth it, now. You might win the war, but you’ll lose this most important battle, if this one dies, won’t you?”

“Then just fucking do it,” Perrie says, but even she sounds unsure now. “What are you waiting for?”

“That, I suppose,” Simon says, nudging the gun against Harry’s head. Harry whimpers loudly, closing his eyes again, preparing for the shot. “To watch your faces as I-”

There’s a loud gunshot and Harry screams, recoiling away from it instinctually. He waits for the darkness to take over, for the pain to stop, or to start, he supposes, because he feels nothing, nothing hurts and, fuck, is he already dead…?

“You’re okay,” Louis says, and Harry opens his eyes finding Louis right in front of him while someone makes quick work of the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. “You’re alright, love, you’re safe, you’re okay.”

“Fucking took you long enough,” Perrie says, but she’s not talking to him, Harry can tell, so he turns his head and- oh.

He finds Jade, gun still in her hand, eyes full of tears. She’s trembling like a leaf, staring at something over Harry’s shoulder, and Harry assumes it’s the body of the man she just killed to save Harry’s life.

“Sorry,” she breathes, probably in response to Perrie’s criticism, but she doesn’t even seem aware of what she’s saying.

Harry can’t even move, so overwhelmed and confused and suddenly exhausted, he’s going to collapse, he’s going to-

“We’ve got to go,” Perrie says, shoving him in the direction they came from. “ _Now_.” 

It’s a blur as they take off running for the wall, but instead of climbing the ladder, it seems someone has made a clean little hole in the bricks beneath the shrubbery behind the empty dorm building, and they’re all able to duck out quickly and keep running. There’s the faraway sound of breaking glass and popping explosions, and Harry turns just in time to see Niall, Steve, Robert, and some of the others quickly coming down the ladder.

Harry feels like he’s outside of his body as he climbs into the truck; the mission they set out to complete is now complete, but Harry feels like he’s missing entire chunks of time, entire details that don’t make any sense to him. He doesn’t even know where he is, let alone what’s just happened, and Louis won’t get out of his fucking face, suddenly.

“Harry?” he’s saying, looking beyond worried as he touches Harry’s cheek and tries to meet his eyes. “Harry? Are you in there?”

“Stop,” Harry breathes, closing his eyes. “Stop.”

Louis stops, freezing in place for a moment and then settling down beside him on the floor. No one says a word as the truck rumbles to life and lurches away, peeling off down the utility road and back to the highway.

“There’s an abandoned motel about half an hour away,” Liam announces from the front seat. “We’ll stop there for the night, reassess in the morning.”

The silence persists until the truck finally stops, and everyone starts piling out. Louis grabs hold of Harry’s wrist again once they’re outside, and Harry begrudgingly meets his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Louis asks quietly, head ducked in close so no one else will hear. “Do you need anything?”

“Leave me alone,” Harry mumbles, tugging his wrist away and shuffling off toward the motel. He tries the first door he finds and it opens, so he drags himself through it and puts a chair in front of the doorknob so that no one will try to check up on him in the night. With that, he collapses onto the old, dirty bed in the center of the room and promptly falls asleep, putting the rest of the world out of his mind until the morning.

-

He wakes up shivering, limbs stiff and sore from the night before. It’s still early, the sun only just barely peeking through the window, which means he’s only been sleeping for a few hours at most, but he can hear the voices of his friends outside, probably figuring out their next move.

He sits up on the bed and scrubs his dirty hands over his dirty face, trying to remind himself where he is and what’s happened. He’s still in shock, he thinks, a little bit, from being held at gunpoint and almost sacrificed in front of all of his friends. He remembers being so, so angry, but he can’t really remember why. Maybe the shock and adrenaline of almost being murdered was messing with his head, but there’s still a twinge of rage when he thinks about Perrie, about the things she was saying, acting like she didn’t care a bit about whether Harry lived or died. Maybe he’s just embarrassed about the way he acted, about the fact that he got caught in the first place. That’s the most likely option, he thinks, because the moment he thinks about it he feels sick, wants to melt into the mattress and let the world go on without him. 

When he finally gets up, he heads to the bathroom, trying the sink gingerly. It’s filthy, moss and mold growing where it’s cracked all over, but the tap releases a trickle of dirty water when Harry turns the knob. He gives it a moment, and eventually it runs clear enough for Harry to clean his hands and splash a little water on his face, trying to wipe off at least some of the grime.

There’s really nothing he can do about the rest of himself; he doesn’t dare even peek into the shower, so he’ll just have to stay in his clothes until he gets back to the university, he thinks. Eventually, he finds his way outside to the parking lot where everyone else is already congregated, and his arrival brings a deafening silence upon the group.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Louis says, clearly trying to diffuse the tension. “Sleep alright?”

Harry shrugs, wrapping his arms around himself and staring at the ground until everyone looks away. He takes a moment to catalogue everyone once they’re distracted, finding that almost everyone is pretending like he doesn’t even exist, which he supposes he deserves. Jade, however, still looks as out of it as she did last night. She’s staring off into the distance, hands limp at her sides, and even when Harry sidesteps a little closer to her, she doesn’t react. Harry wants to thank her for what she did, but he doesn’t even know how to get her attention, let alone bring up the topic, so instead he just nudges her gently and watches as she swings her head to look at him.

She blinks once, like she’s just waking up, and then something flashes in her eyes like recognition, or maybe realization. She crumples into his chest slowly, hugging him tight, and Harry hugs her back immediately, burying his face into her hair in hopes no one will be able to see the way he’s suddenly choking back tears. The group falls silent again, and Harry can feel all the pairs of eyes on himself and Jade, so he turns his back to them slightly and presses closer to Jade’s ear.

“Thank you,” he breathes, squeezing her tighter. “Jade, you didn’t have to-”

“I had to,” Jade says, clawing at his back in an attempt to get even closer. “It was my idea.”

“Thank you,” Harry says again, even quieter than before.

Perrie clears her throat loudly, and Harry turns around slowly, like a child about to be scolded. Everyone’s looking in every direction except for at Harry himself, but Perrie is just watching him expectantly, and Harry flushes under her gaze.

“Do you have anything to say to the rest of us?” she asks. She sounds absolutely livid, and Harry shrinks in on himself, looking helplessly at Louis. Louis looks embarrassed, but not like he wants to help him in any way, eyes fixed firmly on the ground. “Do you realize what you did?” Perrie continues. “Do you have any idea what-”

“Perrie,” Louis says quietly, warning, but Perrie talks right over him.

“Liam’s got a broken hand,” Perrie says. “Jesy’s got a black eye, maybe even a broken orbital bone, but we have no way of knowing right now. That’s _your_ fault, because you couldn’t stop being selfish long enough to complete an _extremely_ dangerous mission.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry says quietly, mostly to his feet.

“I don’t know if you are,” Perrie says. “What the fuck were you thinking, Harry?”

“I-” Harry shakes his head, choking down the lump in his throat. “I don’t know. I wasn’t.” He looks at Jesy, and then at Liam, hoping they can’t see the tears glistening in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“We’re fine,” Jesy says, voice soft, smile softer. Liam nods, but he looks less enthusiastic about easing Harry’s guilt, which only increases it tenfold.

“We were wrong about them armoring up,” Louis says, filling in some of the gaps in Harry’s understanding. “They only had those sticks to protect themselves, but they’re good at using them. We shot down the majority of the Leaders, I think, but a few of them just ran off, so we’ve got no way of knowing how successful the mission was,” he says.

“We’re going back in a few minutes,” Perrie says, “do you think you can handle that?”

“I said I’m sorry,” Harry bites out. “I just- I don’t know. I wanted to destroy everything I could. I got carried away.”

“You deviated from the plan,” Louis says. “That’s not how teams operate, especially this one. You put us all in danger,” he says.

“I’m sorry!” Harry says, exasperated. “What more can I say to make this better?”

“You can’t,” Perrie says, turning away and promptly ending the conversation. Harry feels a tear roll down his cheek when he blinks, and he flinches when Jade touches his arm.

“I know you’re upset,” she says quietly. “So are we. But we have to trust them, yeah? They’re helping us, and they know better, anyway.”

“I know,” Harry says. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” he mutters.

Jade hugs him again, holding on just a moment too long, and Perrie whistles from the truck.

“C’mon,” she calls. “Haven’t got all day.”

Harry sighs, trudging over to the truck and climbing in after everyone. Despite everything, Louis sits down right beside him, pressed against him from shoulder to ankle. Harry wants to reach out and hold him, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to, doesn’t know how upset Louis is, doesn’t even know how upset he’s still supposed to be, himself. Once the truck starts up, with Perrie behind the wheel now that Liam’s injured, Harry feels Louis hand hunting around for something near Harry’s leg and, out of sheer hope, turns his own hand over in his lap, palm up. Louis latches on immediately, squeezing his hand tightly, and Harry hears him swallow hard. 

Harry doesn’t know much, doesn’t know what’s coming next or what’s already done, doesn’t even know how badly he’s fucked up, but knows good and well that he’s fucked up, and that he’s going to have to put a lot of energy into making it better.


	17. Chapter 17

Of all the things they could have expected upon arriving back at the Community compound, they find something so entirely different that, at first, they don’t even know what to make of it.

They use the ladder again instead of their secret hole in the wall so that they can have an aerial view of whatever’s going on inside the compound. They can hear the shouting even from outside the walls, but there’s no smoke, nothing to indicate that the fires they set the night before are still burning. Louis goes up the ladder first, carefully pulling himself up on top of the wall and peering down into the compound.

It’s quiet for a few minutes, save for the echoes of whatever the people inside the compound are chanting. Louis just observes, completely unmoving; Harry’s absolutely dying to know what’s going on, if everything is okay, or if they’ve made it even worse.

Louis’s too high up to see beyond the outline of his body against the sky, but after what feels like forever, he starts climbing back down, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“Yellow outfits are the Leaders, right?” he says, voice hushed like anyone in the world could hear them right now.

“Yeah,” Niall says, frowning. “Blue are other adults, gray are children.”

“I think,” Louis says, pausing for a moment and frowning at the group. “I think there’s been a revolution.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Perrie asks, but she looks hopeful, glancing up at the wall, too.

“I don’t know,” Louis says. “I don’t know what I’m even looking at.”

“Can I have a look?” Harry asks, shy. He feels like he can’t make any sudden movements without everyone jumping down his throat, but he still gets a long stare from everyone at the question, until Perrie scoffs.

“As long as you don’t jump down and start fucking shit up, yeah,” she mutters, stepping aside to clear his path to the ladder.

Harry flushes red but doesn’t say anything, feeling rather like he deserves all the comments and digs at the moment. He holds his breath the whole way up the ladder, pulling himself up and only leaning far enough to see over the wall.

He can see the charred remains of the Leaders’ apartments from this angle, which makes him smile in sick satisfaction, but the dorm building is blocking his view of the theater. He has a full view of the court yard though, which is absolutely full of people, children and adults alike, more people than Harry’s ever seen in one place in his life.

There’s a small circle in the middle of the courtyard, where the flagpole is, where Harry nearly died last night. In the center of the circle he can make out a few yellow-clad people, and he’s much too far away to tell what they’re doing, but everyone else is chanting, dancing, it seems, celebrating something. Harry closes his eyes and tries to listen to what they’re saying, ignoring the cold wind blowing in his ears and focusing on the words.

“At last, at last,” the people are shouting, “the storm is passed!”

It hits him like a brick wall, the weight of those words, and suddenly he can’t get down the ladder fast enough. He’s only just barely careful enough to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall to his death, jumping down the last few rungs of the ladder and laughing brightly.

“At last, at last!” he says, turning to Niall and Jade, and then Robert and Amelia, grinning madly. “The storm is passed!”

Niall shouts in excitement, jumping up and down and dragging Harry in for a hug. Jade folds in on herself like a deflating balloon, but she’s grinning too when Harry pulls her into the hug and then reaches for Robert and Amelia to join, as well. The five of them join in the chant for a moment, matching the rhythm of the crowd inside the compound walls, and Harry feels so happy he could cry.

“What is going on?” Louis asks, once the five of them have broken away from their hug. “What does that mean?”

“It’s what we sing whenever a bad time comes to an end,” Amelia says, bouncing excitedly. “One winter we were snowed indoors for almost a month, and when the snow finally melted, we all went outside and sang for ages.”

“It’s like a thank you to the sun for ending whatever has weakened us,” Harry says. “Though something tells me it’s taken on a slightly new meaning since last we heard it.”

“Shit!” Perrie laughs. “We’ve done it!”

“Should we go in? Make sure everything is okay?” Louis says, but nobody’s really listening to him, too busy cheering. “Hey!”

Harry twirls around and kisses him, laughing brightly when he pulls away. Louis looks surprised, but thrilled, still holding onto Harry’s hands when he makes to twirl away.

“C’mon!” Harry says, pulling Louis toward the hole in the wall. “Lou, c’mon!”

For once, it seems, Louis throws caution to the wind, allowing Harry to drag him all the way around the corner to where the hole they made is concealed in the brush. Harry ducks through it quickly, and everyone else follows, and suddenly the chanting is so much louder, so much clearer.

“At last, at last!” the entire Community sings, “the storm is passed!”

They stay on the outskirts of it for a while, watching from the sidelines until the situation has calmed down a little bit. Once it seems safe enough to start pushing through the crowd to get to the middle of it, they all stick close together, until Harry spots a familiar face watching him from within the crowd. He blinks at her, and she blinks back, and then slowly cracks the biggest smile Harry’s ever seen on her.

“Harry!” she calls, like somehow he would’ve missed her. Harry breaks away from the group, making his way over to her, weaving his way through adults reuniting with the children they brought into the world and had to give up to the Community, friends reuniting with one another, everyone celebrating the end of the Community. Some of the younger children look very confused, absolutely terrified, but he’s sure that when they’re older, they’ll always remember this day.

“Ava,” Harry says, coming to a stop in front of her. “What happened?”

“When we woke up this morning, the Maidens were ushering us all outside,” Ava says. “They were saying something had happened in the night, that the sun was setting us free, and that we didn’t have to live like this anymore. They told us that there was a world before the Community, that they’d seen it, had lived in it, and now we’re going to return to it. It’s exactly like you said, Harry, there really _is_ a world out there!”

“I know!” Harry laughs, thrilled. He’s never heard Ava speak so many words all once, but he can feel the relief radiating off of her, like she’s been waiting for this day her entire life. Maybe she has, without even knowing it, and Harry’s so fucking happy that she’s finally arrived here.

“Oh, this is the best day ever,” she says, hugging Harry tight. “Thank you. Thank you for all of this.”

“It wasn’t me,” Harry says, turning around to look for his friends. Perrie, Jade, and the boys are helping some of the adults get the last few remaining Leaders tied up and escorting them out of the courtyard, Niall, Robert and Amelia are mingling and cheering with some of the children, and Louis’s loitering a few feet away, watching Harry quietly. “It was them,” Harry says, locking eyes with Louis for a moment before turning back to Ava. “It was all them.”

“But they couldn’t have done it without you, I know it,” Ava says. “You were the first one out of bed when they broke into the gymnasium. I don’t know what you’ve all been up to the past few months, but thank you,” she says earnestly.

“You’re welcome,” Harry says. “I’m just happy that it’s all over now.”

Ava nods, looking away for a moment, watching the crowd. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” Ava says, looking back up at him shyly.

“What is?” Harry frowns.

“This,” she says, gesturing between them. “We were supposed to be married, and now…”

“Oh,” Harry says, blushing. “Yeah. Um.”

“I mean,” Ava says quickly, “it’s not that I don’t think you’re a lovely person. I’m sure you are,” she says, laughing awkwardly. “It’s just, wow, I really didn’t want to have to marry you.”

“No, same, me too,” Harry stutters. “It’s- yeah. I’m glad, too.”

Louis chooses that moment to interrupt, smiling tightly at Ava and then nudging against Harry’s side. “Everything alright?” he asks, glancing between them. “We need to reconvene soon, figure out what’s next.”

“Yeah, good,” Harry says. “Louis, this is Ava.”

“Hi,” Ava says, looking spooked. Harry knows exactly how she feels; it’s jarring to meet a new person when you’ve never even understood the concept of strangers, and Ava’s acting appropriately weird about it.

“Ava,” Louis says, like he remembers her name somehow, but he can’t place it.

“We were, uh, supposed to be married,” Harry says, watching Louis’s face carefully.

“Oh,” Louis says, looking Ava over quickly. “Nice to meet you.”

“This is Louis,” Harry says, reaching for Louis’s arm instinctually and grabbing hold. “My boyfriend.” The word feels foreign in his mouth, but he’s read about it, thought about it for ages, and it feels right.

Ava blinks, looking confused, but it’s nothing compared to the way Louis’s jaw drops. Harry just smiles shyly, determinedly not looking anyone in the eye.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Ava asks, frowning. 

“It means that I love him, the way people should love each other when they decide to spend their lives together,” Harry says, finally looking up at Louis. “And that’s okay outside of here.”

“Oh,” Ava says, and her eyes have gone all soft and warm when Harry turns back to her. “That’s lovely, Harry. I’m happy for you.” She looks at Louis next, smiling when she sees the way Harry’s holding onto him. “Better you than me, mate,” she shrugs.

Louis laughs, surprised, and turns into Harry’s embrace. “Well, we should get going,” he says, looking up at Harry. “We’ve some talks to be had.”

“Great,” Harry sighs, letting go of Louis for just a moment to hug Ava again. Louis grabs his hand the second he pulls away, and suddenly he’s being tugged across the courtyard.

“Woah,” Harry says, stumbling along behind him. “What, are you jealous?”

“No,” Louis says defensively. “I’ve nothing to be jealous of, have I?” he smirks. “Apparently you’re my boyfriend.”

“Oh, uh,” Harry blushes, trying to meet Louis’s eyes. “Is that, um, is that okay?”

“Obviously,” Louis says, stopping short and turning around to kiss Harry quickly. Harry smiles, starting to melt into it just as Louis pulls away. Louis just looks at him for a few moments, watching, observing, and Harry feels his smile fade into a grimace.

“Are you upset with me?” Harry asks quietly. “About last night?”

Louis sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’m furious with you,” he says, mostly to Harry’s chest. “I’ve never been angrier in my whole life, but it’s not me you should be worried about. Perrie’s about ready to serve your head on a platter at dinner tonight.”

“Seems like kind of a waste,” Harry jokes weakly, “seeing all the trouble she went through to make sure my head remained attached to my body.”

“It’s not funny,” Louis says. “You really fucked up, Harry.”

“I know I did,” Harry says, voice hardly above a whisper. “I don’t know how to make it better.”

“I don’t know, either,” Louis sighs again, shaking his head. “But I guess all’s well that ends well, right? I’d be so much angrier with you if you were dead.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, chewing harshly on his lip and staring at his shoes, trying to ignore the guilt that’s clawing its way up his throat again. If he could go back in time and change it, he would, he’d tell himself he was acting like a fool and actually stick to the plan this time, and maybe he wouldn’t be on such thin ice now. 

They find the others talking to a few of the adults, and a couple Maidens that Harry remembers from his childhood. Harry lingers at the back of the group, heart set on flying under the radar for the rest of the day, and listens.

“We haven’t got much of a team,” Perrie is saying, gesturing to the motley crew behind her, “but we’ll be here for anything you need. We could come back in a couple of days, once everyone’s recuperated, help you take down the walls and get people where they need to be.”

“What’s happening?” Louis asks, making his way to the head of the group, where he belongs.

“A lot of these people are from around here, originally, and got forced into the Community when it started,” Perrie explains. “Some of them don’t have other places to go, though, and a lot of the children don’t have anyone at all except each other, so the plan is to tear down the walls and maintain what’s left of the campus for those who want to stay,” she says.

“Good plan,” Louis says. “And what about the last few assholes in yellow over there?” he asks, pointing at where the last of the men in charge of the Community are bound at the edge of the compound.

“We’ll figure that out,” one of the Maidens says, turning to glare at the Leaders over her shoulder. “Thank you for everything, you guys, but I think we’ve got it from here.”

They don’t hang around much longer after that; they’re all exhausted, and it’s a long drive back to London. Harry, for one, feels like he could sleep for a year, and he can’t wait to get into the truck and sleep the whole journey away. 

He doesn’t get even a second to pretend to close his eyes, though, because once they’re all piled in the truck and on the road back to London, Perrie kicks him hard in the shin and demands his attention.

“Alright, asshole, let’s talk,” she says. 

“Perrie,” Louis mutters, blinking at her from where his head is lolled back against the wall. “Can we do this later?”

“No,” Perrie says. “Listen to me, you smug little shit, if you ever try to-”

“I was wrong,” Harry says, effectively shutting her up. “I know I was. I was being selfish, and stupid, and I put every single one of you in danger, and I’m so, so sorry. I took this mission personally, I let it get to me, let it convince me that I had some sort of special stake in shutting the Community down, but that was wrong. I owe it to you guys to be smarter, stronger, and less impulsive than that. It’s not an excuse, but I wanted so badly to just watch that entire place burn to the ground for everything they put me through, I let it get in the way of my obligations to this team. It won’t happen again, I promise,” he says, staring Perrie dead in the eyes when he’s finished.

Perrie looks impressed, nudging Louis with the toe of her boot. “Did you tell him to say that?”

“No,” Louis says, gazing up at Harry with the softest, sleepiest smile Harry’s ever seen him wear. “You’re forgiven,” he says. “We don’t hold grudges around here. That’s how teams fall apart.”

“Can I say something?” Liam asks from the front seat, cradling his injured and badly bandaged hand against his chest.

“Is it going to make me want to break your other hand?” Perrie asks.

“Maybe,” Liam shrugs. “Honestly, I know that it wasn’t the intended outcome and that it was a risk nobody should have taken, but if last night hadn’t gone the way it did, we wouldn’t be leaving behind a successful mission right now,” he says. “We’d be heading back to London to plan our next steps, living in fear of retaliation, but instead we’re going home happy and proud, knowing we did what we always said we would do. And none of us even died,” he says.

“Cheers to achieving our goal,” Louis says, holding up an imaginary cup to the rest of the truck.

“Cheers to nobody even dying,” Niall chimes in, holding up his imaginary cup, as well.

“Cheers to me making a headshot the first time I ever fired a gun,” Jade says, thrusting up her imaginary cup with a grin.

“Cheers to all of us,” Harry says, adding his imaginary cup slowly. “At last, at last,” he hums.

“The storm is passed!” everyone sings, laughing as they all sit back. 

They fall silent naturally, the quiet humming of the truck under them providing the perfect amount of white noise to wash away the rest of the world. Harry cuddles up close to Louis, tucking his face into his neck, and promptly passes out the entire ride back to London.


	18. Chapter 18

They all disperse once they’re back at the university, all eager to take a long, well deserved nap, probably. Harry’s got every intention of heading right to Louis’s room to curl up with him and fall asleep, but Jade catches his eye in the lobby, and the look she gives him tells him he’s not going to sleep just yet. Jade takes Robert and Amelia by the hands, and nods Niall along, as well, and Harry watches them head off into the lounge instead of heading up to the third floor with everyone else.

Louis doesn’t seem to notice, lacing his fingers with Harry’s and making to pull him up the next flight of stairs. Harry resists, though, gaze stuck on the door to the lounge, and Louis tugs his hand a little to get his attention.

“Don’t you want to have a nap?” Louis says, frowning when Harry finally looks at him.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I’ll be up in a bit, okay?”

Louis smiles knowingly, pressing a kiss to the corner of Harry’s mouth and leaving silently, disappearing around the corner at the top of the next flight of stairs. Harry’s feet take him into the lounge more than his head, and he smiles when everyone turns around to look at him.

Jade approaches him first, burying herself into his chest and hugging him tight. Harry opens his arms for the rest of them, and they all pile in eventually, silent for a long few minutes.

They migrate over to the fireplace eventually, even though there’s no fire burning and they’re all settling down on the cold floor. It’s almost like their first day here all over again, all of them piled together like a heap of puppies on the floor, thinking about what they’ve done.

“I’m proud of you all,” Jade says, the first one to speak since they came through the door. “I’m so proud of us.”

“So am I,” Harry says. “I don’t know what comes next, but I know that we can do anything.”

“I wasn’t sure about any of this,” Niall says. “I thought you all were crazy for getting out of bed that night. But if I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I think I might go back,” Amelia says. “A few of the children found their parents, did you hear? I think I’d like to find my parents,” she says quietly, staring at the fireplace.

“That’s lovely, Amelia,” Jade says, reaching over to squeeze her arm. 

“I’m never leaving this place,” Robert says. “Never, ever.”

“Me either,” Harry says, smiling at Jade and Niall. 

“Ditto,” Jade grins, leaning into Harry’s chest. 

“Guess I’ll stick around,” Niall shrugs, laughing when Jade pulls him in, too. 

They stay there for a while, all five of them, reveling in the feeling of their weight upon the world, each footfall shaping the ground beneath them a little differently, each breath shaking a leaf miles away. For a world that they never even knew existed, they’ve sure left their mark.

They head off to bed one by one, Amelia first, and then Niall and Robert. Jade picks herself up off the floor carefully and reaches down to pull Harry up, as well, and they set off up the stairs together to the third floor. She gives Harry’s hand one last little squeeze before she sneaks silently into Perrie’s bedroom, but Harry keeps on down the hall, cracking Louis’s door open and peeking his head inside.

Louis’s just sitting up on his bed, probably still waiting for Harry, even after all this time. He smiles when Harry finally lets himself into the room, reaches up for him like a cuddly child, so Harry kicks his shoes off by the door and shuffles right to him. Louis hugs him long and hard, face pressed into his neck, and Harry nearly falls asleep right then and there, until Louis pulls away to look up at him.

“You okay?” he asks, like he has any idea how strange this is for Harry.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Surprisingly, yeah. I’m okay.”

“How about the others?” Louis asks. 

“Good,” Harry nods. “Amelia wants to go back home, try and find out who her parents are. I think it’s a good idea.”

Louis nods, falling silent for a long minute. “What- um,” he frowns, not quite looking Harry in the eye. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Harry asks, matching his frown.

“Do you want to find your parents?” Louis asks, brows furrowed, cheeks tinged pink. He’s so pretty, Harry wants to kiss him, so he does, leaning in and kissing Louis’s lips softly for a few short seconds.

“Maybe,” he says when he pulls away. “I don’t know. Not right now.”

“Why not?” Louis asks, but he looks relieved, like he thought for a second Harry would ever leave without him.

“It’s scary, the thought of-” he cuts himself off, shrugging. “I don’t know. I was one of the first babies born in the Community, if the timeline we have is right,” he says. “Niall and Jade, as well. We were, like, in the first four or five babies conceived and born after the Community was established.”

“So?” Louis says. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I don’t know,” Harry mutters. “Just… I don’t know. Forget it.”

“Wait,” Louis says, realization dawning on his face. “Wait, you think…?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says again, even quieter. “Maybe.”

“Harry,” Louis says, watching him carefully.

“Could’ve been any of them, y’know?” Harry says. “Any single one of them.”

“None of those monsters are your father,” Louis says firmly. 

“You don’t know that, though,” Harry says. “And I don’t- I don’t know if I could live with knowing that my father was one of the people who started this whole mess-”

“Stop,” Louis says. “You don’t know for sure. There’s no way to know for sure, anyway, and it’s so unlikely,” he says, a little bit frantic, like he’d do anything to convince Harry that he wasn’t brought into this world by one of the men he just killed to take it back.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I’m tired.”

“Let’s sleep,” Louis says, pulling Harry down onto the pillow and dragging the covers up and over them. “Stop thinking, and just sleep,” Louis hums, pressing his lips against Harry’s forehead in a lingering kiss.

Harry rests his head on Louis’s chest and closes his eyes, letting the rhythmic rise and fall of Louis’s chest and the sound of his heart beating under Harry’s ear be the only thing in his mind. 

This is where he belongs, and he’s always known that, but it’s abundantly clear to him now, curled up in Louis’s arms in the middle of the day, falling asleep to the sound of the cold February wind whistling against the old, cloudy university windows. At last, he’s got a place where he belongs, and no matter what happens next, no matter what the world has in store for him, he’s never going to let anything take this away from him, and, for now, that’s the only thing he knows for sure.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked the fic, you can reblog it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527677/chapters/43912465)
> 
>  
> 
> [faq](http://suspendrs-fics.tumblr.com/faq)
> 
>  
> 
> [the book Harry was reading throughout this story is [Paper Towns by John Green](http://www.johngreenbooks.com/paper-towns), also [EMPs are a real thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse), and please ask any other questions you may have [here](http://suspendrs.tumblr.com/ask), because I probably do have an answer]


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